


signs

by ganymede_elegy



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Family, honestly probably a lot of cheesy romance tropes too, inspired by the secret garden, love and loss and grief and hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27454093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganymede_elegy/pseuds/ganymede_elegy
Summary: “Things are rarely so dead they can't be brought back,” Jon says and she wants to tell him that yes, they can, but she can't find her voice. “If you want, I could check.”“You would know if it's alive or not?” she breathes in disbelief and he nods. She takes a moment to decide, but there's something rising again in her. Hope, she knows what it is now and she wants it to go away, but it's in her already, she can't push it out. “You can't tell anyone.”He holds his hands up and gives her one of his half smiles and says “promise”.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 157
Kudos: 292





	1. Autumn

_two ravens in the old oak tree_

_one for you and one for me_

* * *

When her father dies, she doesn't cry.

While he is away on business, one of the King's men comes to tell her of an earthquake in Dorne, of the devastation, how her father was crushed beneath the rubble and her first thought is _what now_. She doesn't cry, though. She never cries, she doesn't know how to.

In truth, she barely knows her father. Her mother had died when she was very young, in childbirth with Arya. After that, her father might as well have died along with her. He shuttered up Winterfell and took a position in the capital as an advisor to the King and she was sent to boarding school. She thinks she remembers her mother, a kind voice, a warm hug, but it's distant, perhaps a dream rather than a memory.

She hated boarding school, with all the girls that would laugh at her for her silence and, when she _did_ speak, for her northern accent. She worked hard to suppress the accent until she sounded just like everyone else and still it made no difference, for she was a cold, bitter thing and they all knew it.

When Arya joined her at school, it changed little. They were so different and they fought constantly and eventually they stopped talking altogether. It was like she had no sister at all. Robb was a distant idea, off at his own boarding school and then to the army.

During the shorter holidays, they would stay at school; for the longer ones, they were sent to King's Landing where they saw little of father, too busy with his work. Their Septa took care of them; father didn't seem to care how they were raised as long as he was not troubled by them, and so the three of them were given whatever they wanted to placate them and make sure they didn't cause a fuss.

Robb tried, for a while, she thinks, but he was so much older and they saw him so infrequently that it made no difference. And now he's away in the army, a captain or a general or some rank she hadn't cared to learn. He's stationed in Pentos and father is dead.

* * *

She is too old for boarding school at sixteen and Winterfell has been closed off for years and instead of letting her stay in King's Landing, Robb sends her to the Vale, to Eyrie Manor, with their aunt.

_Aunt Lysa has agreed for you to stay while Arya is at school_ , Robb had sent, his penmanship terrible, the letter hastily written (she is an afterthought, as she always is). _I know it seems far, but I think it will be good to get you out of King's Landing for a while_.

She finds she doesn't have much of an opinion on this. King's Landing is hot and loud and it has never agreed with her. Perhaps she would have liked the weather in Winterfell better, but she can't remember the few years she did spend there.

This year was supposed to be her debut into society to find a husband and it isn't _relief_ that she feels when instead they load her onto a steamship headed for the Vale. It isn't relief, but it isn't sadness, either. She feels nothing, really.

* * *

There are a few girls on the steamship about her age and they try to talk to her but she doesn't want their company. She's best alone, she has found. The girls become cruel and they call her stone. But she is not stone; she is more akin to steel.

* * *

Gulltown is nothing like King's Landing. There's a fog that settles over the whole city and seagulls spin overhead at the docks. The sky is grey and she feels a damp chill settle onto her skin, something she has never felt in the capital. She thinks she remembers cold from the north, but it has been so long and she doesn't like to think of Winterfell. Her dress is ill suited for the weather, too light to ward off the cold.

At the station, she waits with her trunk.

She waits for hours but no one comes. Robb had written that her aunt would pick her up and Sansa wonders if perhaps her aunt came and couldn't find her. Sansa has been told that she looks like her mother, though there are no photographs of her anymore, father got rid of them all. Surely her aunt would recognize her if that were true.

Eventually a man shows up and she sees one of the crewmen point to her and the man makes his way over. He's short, but thickset, with light brown hair, greying at the temples, and what appears to be a permanent frown.

“Sansa Stark?” he asks and she finds him rude but bites her tongue and nods. “I'm Mr. Brune, your aunt has sent me to take you to Eyrie.”

He does not pick up her trunk or offer to help, he simply turns and begins walking away and she is left scrambling after him, hauling the much too heavy trunk in her wake. When she cannot lift it high enough to get it into the carriage, the driver takes pity on her and helps her load it on.

The ride from Gulltown to Eyrie Manor is long and the roads are rough and she grips the seat as the carriage jostles over the uneven ground.

“You'll find your aunt won't want to see you,” Mr. Brune says at some point, seeming unfazed by the swaying of the carriage. “You'll have to entertain yourself.”

That's fine, she thinks. She's better alone and though she feels a relief that there will not be a doting, overbearing aunt to deal with, she also finds a bitterness clawing at her that she can't explain.

* * *

“There,” Mr. Brune says, nodding out the carriage window. “Eyrie Manor.”

She has to squint to see it, a dark lump on the horizon, barely visible against the grey moors and the grey sky and the rain. As they drive, the rolling hills hide it from view now and then, but it grows steadily larger as they approach.

The manor is huge, she cannot say if it is larger or smaller than Winterfell had been, she doesn't remember. But she knows her mother's family was just as distinguished as her father's and she figures it's likely the same size.

Her mother had grown up here, she thinks distantly. She knows her grandfather, Hoster Tully, had owned the estate until his death, and then her Aunt Lysa and Lysa's husband had inherited it. Lysa's husband is also dead now. Most of her family is, it seems.

No one greets her when the carriage finally stops in front of the great grey manor and the driver helps her get her trunk down. Mr. Brune goes inside and she is thankful that the driver once again takes pity on her and at least helps her take her trunk up the front stone steps and she drags it just inside the doors.

Mr. Brune barely waits for her and begins to ascend the grand central stairwell without so much as a backwards glance and a barely heard “your room is this way.”

She decides to leave her trunk in the entrance hall as there is no way she can both drag it up the stairs _and_ keep up with Mr. Brune, and so she hurries behind him, up two flights of stairs and through dark, cold hallways, finally reaching a heavy oak door that he pushes open. It's a sizable room with a great canopied bed in the center and a table and chairs for eating and large, elaborate tapestries hung on nearly every wall. She knows that tapestries were hung in old houses like this for insulation, but it seems like they have barely done their job to keep out the chill.

She is cold and damp from the ride and the idea of going downstairs to get her trunk and haul it _all the_ _way_ to the third floor is too much, and so instead she strips off her dress down to her shift and climbs into the large bed, vowing that she will simply take a nap first before going back down.

* * *

She wakes to sunlight flooding the room and a rustling noise and the sound of china clinking.

When she sits up, she sees a girl by the table, setting a tray of food down. The girl looks a little older than her, maybe twenty or so, with nearly black hair and an apron that makes her one of the maids.

“Ah, you're up,” she says, her voice bright and her eyes shining “We thought you'd sleep the whole day.” When Sansa doesn't answer, the girl smiles and gestures at the tray. “Breakfast, Cook said to bring it up to you before it went cold.”

Sansa _is_ hungry and so she slides out of the bed and realizes she's only in her shift. It's warmer than it had been yesterday, but she's still cold and she looks at her dress in a pile on the floor and she can tell it's still wet from being bunched up instead of properly hung to dry overnight.

“Your trunk's outside,” the girl points to the door. “Jon brought it up this mornin'. We didn't know what to do with it and I realized it must be yours. Heavy thing, it is. None of us wanted to lug it up so we called Jon.” She gives a bright laugh that jars against Sansa's mood.

“Well, bring it in,” she says and the girl gives her an incredulous look and Sansa wonders if the girl isn't used to being given orders. But the girl doesn't argue and she goes to open the door and Sansa jumps back into the bed and ducks beneath the covers. There's no one outside the door, but she hides just in case this _Jon_ is still loitering about.

“There,” the girl huffs, dragging the trunk into the room and depositing it at the end of her bed. “I'm Mya, by the way. Mya Stone.”

“Thank you, Mya,” she remembers her courtesies and, now that the door is closed again, gets out of the bed. She waits, but Mya does not move to help her and finally she says, “aren't you going to help me dress?”

“Help you dress?” Mya laughs. “Are you a child?”

“No,” she can hear the petulance in her own voice. “My Septa always helped me dress.” At school, their uniforms had been easy to put on, but at home with her more intricate clothing, she'd always had her Septa to help her.

“Well, you won't find no Septa here,” Mya says flippantly and Sansa bristles at the casual tone. “You'll have to learn to dress yourself.” She starts moving around the room, opening the curtains and Sansa hesitates before walking to her trunk and opening it.

She selects her heaviest dress, which she still thinks is likely too light for the weather, despite the sun today. King's Landing had been so hot and dry, the thin fabric of her dresses will not do here. The dress is easy to pull on but it buttons down the back and she struggles, her fingers are able to close a few, but her arms don't bend that far back and she twists and turns to try and reach them. Eventually she hears a laugh and realizes that Mya had been watching her struggle and she feels shame burn at her. She is sixteen and cannot dress herself and for the first time she understands that this is not normal, at least not here.

Mya seems to take pity on her (just like the driver had, and is this what she has become? A creature that only inspires pity?) and comes over and helps her button up the back of the dress. Mya frowns at the fabric, pinching some of the skirt between her fingers.

“We'll need to get you new clothes,” Mya eyes her trunk and seems to find the other dresses are no better. “Winter'll be comin' soon and it's not like your northern winters, but it gets mighty cold.”

Sansa feels herself pull away from the girl. “What do _you_ know of northern winters?” she asks, affronted (though really, she barely remembers them herself).

Mya grins and says “Jon's told us about them, he makes fun of us for shiverin' durin' the winters here. Now, eat your breakfast and I'll let Mr. Brune know you need to go into town.”

* * *

After she eats, she feels somewhat better and decides to take a look around her room. The tapestries are beautiful, she concedes, and she thinks she recognizes the stories they're based on. The one next to the vanity she's sure is of Florian and Jonquil, she remembers reading the story when she was very young. She thinks she liked it, though she can't remember why.

Just as she's studying it, she hears a faint noise, almost like the cry of a child; she remembers Arya's tantrums well enough to recognize the sound. It almost seems to be coming from the tapestry itself and she leans forward, the musty tapestry making her nose itch, but she hears it again. Curious, she pulls the fabric aside and finds a small door behind it. A servant's door, she thinks, back when servants only used the back halls and secret, small doorways.

It unlatches and she ducks through, finding herself in a long abandoned hallway, dusty and full of cobwebs. The servants do not use these halls anymore, that much is clear. There are windows, but the light that filters through the thick glass is dull and she can see dust swirling through the air around her as she makes her way.

She peeks into doors she comes across, most appear to be unused bedrooms, but one she finds looks like a little girl's room and this makes her curious. There are no children here as far as she knows, and so she steps into the room to look around.

No, it isn't a little girl's room, she thinks as her eyes wander. It is a girl in transition from a child to a woman. The vanity is cluttered with powders and perfumes, a mirror, combs, but there is also a musical jewelry box that when she cranks and opens, plays a child's lullaby. There are an older girl's dresses in the dresser (old ones, out of fashion), but there are also dolls sitting on a large stuffed chair in the corner of the room. Whoever's room this had been was probably only a little younger than Sansa herself. A girl on the verge of adulthood, a girl trying to prepare herself for society and marriage.

She goes back to the vanity and finds a picture frame hidden behind the piles of forgotten things and when she pulls it out, she sees a photograph of two young girls, perhaps about ten or so, laughing and sitting on a large wooden swing together.

The photograph takes her breath away because these girls, they look like her. One of them is her mother, she _knows_ it, though she cannot tell which. Was this her mother's room? Or Lysa's? She opens the music box again and digs through the jewelry in there, hoping to find some sort of clue, though she doesn't know what she's looking for. The necklaces are mostly cheap things, things you'd give to a child. There's an old elaborate key, rings and bracelets, a lacquer hair clip, some foreign coins she thinks are Braavosi. Nothing in the box tells her if this was her mother's or not. She finds no locket with her father's portrait, perhaps, or something with _property of Catelyn Tully_ etched into it.

The room is dusty and stale and no one has been in here for years. Even if it were Lysa's room, Lysa would not live here anymore. She had married and moved into more appropriate rooms. Sansa assumes that after grandfather's death, they likely moved into the master suite.

The reminder of her aunt's presence in the house snaps her out of her wonder and she leaves the room and hurries back to her own. What if Mya or Mr. Brune had come by to tell her that her aunt wanted to see her and Sansa was nowhere to be found? When she gets back to her room, though, there's no sign that anyone has come by. Her tray with it's empty dishes is still on the table, nothing is disturbed.

After what feels like hours, she gets bored and frustrated and decides that if no one cares enough to come tell her what she's supposed to do, then she can do whatever she pleases.

* * *

She finally finds signs of life near the kitchens. A large woman is singing as she rolls out dough, her voice is lovely and fills the entire room.

“Ah, there you are, Miss Sansa,” Mya's voice comes from behind her. “I talked to Mr. Brune, we can't go to town today, it's too late, but he says we can take the cart tomorrow. I'm to go with you since you won't know any of the shops and I'll make Jon drive us.” She leans forward conspiratorially and Sansa again wonders at her familiarity and the casual way Mya speaks to her, “I can't drive the cart, last time I tried I drove it right into a ditch!”

“Spilled half my beans into the mud!” Cook cries, slapping her dough onto the floured counter in disgust.

“Oh, who likes beans anyway,” Mya grins and winks at Sansa, who doesn't know what to do with that, so she chooses to stay silent. “So you have today to do whatever you want. Why don't you go look around the grounds? Sun's out, you shouldn't be too cold in your dress.” At that, Mya points at a coat and a hat hanging on a rack near the door, “and you can borrow those for now.”

With that, Mya turns and heads off to another part of the house and Sansa is left standing in the entryway to the kitchen. Cook and the other kitchen servants ignore her and she is unused to this. In King's Landing, the servants were always fussing and trying to appease her. She feels invisible and it's a strange feeling, but also freeing. If they do not care about what she does, then she'll do whatever she wants.

She does take Mya's advice though, and goes outside. Eyrie Manor is cold and stuffy, she doesn't like being inside. She's never thought of a building as dead before, but it's the best word she can come up with to describe it. Old and grey and dead.

Outside is little better. Autumn has turned the leaves brown and most have fallen off the branches at this point and it's just as quiet and desolate as indoors. Still though, the crisp air is better than the stale air of her rooms and, she assumes, the rest of the manor. The only place the air hadn't felt stale was in the kitchens, where the servants breathed life into it.

She forgot to ask about the crying; she had been so distracted by possibly finding her mother's room, she had completely forgotten why she looked behind the tapestry to begin with. She resolves to ask Mya or Mr. Brune the next time she sees them.

The gardens are boring, just endless stone paths through small plots of edged garden beds and hedgerows. There's one very tall hedgerow that seems to be covered in ivy and when she gets close, she realizes it's no hedgerow at all, but a stone wall so overgrown she can hardly see the stone. _Curious_ , she thinks. A stone wall out in the gardens. Perhaps it's a shed of some kind, but the the wall seems to stretch further than any shed has a right to and there doesn't appear to be a roof, so it isn't a wall for a building.

A noise makes her look up and she sees a bright yellow songbird perched on the wall, it's tiny head bobbing this way and that as it trills out. It looks like it's holding some bit of green in it's mouth, though the only green she's seen around here have been the hedgerows and the ivy; everything else has died from the cold.

“Where did you come from,” she asks the songbird, her voice is quiet and she's surprised at herself – she isn't one to talk to animals. The bird trills at her and hops a little ways down the wall and she follows, though she really can't say why. “Where are you going?” The songbird trills once more and flies up and over the wall and when she backs up a little to try and see over the top, she can see the yellow bird sitting in a tree branch just over the wall.

“What're ye doin' out here?” a craggy voice calls out and she whirls around to see a stooped old man pushing a wheelbarrow through one of the hedgerow openings. He eyes her suspiciously and she knows that she is technically a lady and he a servant, but she feels like she's a trespasser here.

“I'm looking around the gardens, Mya said I could.”

“And talkin'a birds,” he wheezes out a laugh, his mouth opens to reveal a set of yellowed, crooked teeth, though he's missing very few.

“I wasn't,” she argues, nearly stomping her foot, but she stops herself. Truly, she doesn't know what has come over her.

“He's just lookin' for food,” the old man points at the yellow songbird and then cups his hand over his mouth and makes a trilling noise that sounds almost like the bird itself. The bird flies over and lands on a hedgerow near the man. “He's a friend.” To her surprise, the man reaches out one gnarled finger and brushes it lightly down the bird's plumage and the bird lets him.

“I don't have any friends,” she finds herself saying and that surprises her, too.

“He'll be yer friend,” the old man winks at the songbird. “Animals will always be yer friend.”

“He came from over that wall,” she says and turns to the ivy covered stone again. “What's it for?”

There's silence and the old man regards her for a moment. “It's a garden, but it's all shut up now. Locked away.”

“Why would anyone lock away a _garden_?” she scoffs. There are gardens all over the place, why would anyone lock one away?

“Used to belong to the missus,” he nods towards Eyrie Manor, “her and her sister.” Something in Sansa's stomach twists painfully, but the old man notices nothing and continues on. “After Missus Catelyn died, old Hoster locked it up and Missus Lysa never reopened it. Won't let any of us go in. Shame, it is, used to be filled with flowers of all sorts, the girls'd spend hours in there playin' and plantin'-”

“How do I get in,” she interrupts, her words a rush.

“Ye don't,” the man scowls. “It's locked up and it stays that way. No one goes in, Missus' orders.”

She nods and the old man nods back and continues on his way and the yellow songbird takes flight back over the wall. When he's out of sight, she finds herself nearly out of breath and she doesn't know why.

It's locked. Locked implies a door. She turns back and walks along the wall, running her hand through the ivy, moving it just enough to see the stone underneath and she does this until she finds it – a small red door set into the stone, buried under a thick layer of green. Her hands shake as she tries the knob and finds it locked, just like the old man said it would be, and somehow she's disappointed, though she's not sure why.

How can she ask for the key? If her aunt wants no one in here, there's no way the servants would give her a key. Would they even have it, or would it be something Lysa would keep for herself? There's likely only one key, the lock on the door is old and the key is like to be one of those old iron ones. _Like the one she found in the jewelry box this morning_ , she realizes and something bubbles up in her chest, but she doesn't recognize the emotion.

She turns from the wall and begins to hurry back, but she had wandered quite a bit and finds she can't make heads nor tails of the hedgerows. As she rounds a corner, she nearly runs straight into a very large white dog and she lets out a surprised scream (though really, the worst thing to do around a vicious animal is _scream_. Her logic knows this, but it comes out anyway).

“Whoa, hey,” a voice says and she looks up. In her panic, she hadn't noticed the man standing just a bit behind the dog. “It's alright, he doesn't bite.”

Her heart is hammering and she feels faint – she can't tell if it's from the scare or her need to get back to that room and find the key.

“You ok?” the voice says again and this time she truly looks up. A man, but only a few years older than her, maybe Mya's age. His hair is pulled up and tied at the back of his head and he has the beginnings of a beard, like he hasn't shaved in a few days. Both his hair and beard are dark and his eyes are as grey as the moors and for a moment she feels like she's seen a ghost. _He looks like father_ , she thinks, though that's not technically true. He looks _northern_. Hadn't everyone in King's Landing always joked about how northern father and Arya looked? “Ghost won't hurt you, I promise.”

“Ghost?” she breathes. Can he read her mind? How did he know she was thinking about ghosts?

“Ghost,” he points at the white dog.

“Oh,” she looks down at the dog – Ghost – who is now sitting patiently at his owner's feet, his tail wagging. “I was just startled.”

“Well, we didn't mean to startle you, Miss Sansa,” he says and gives a dip of his head that isn't a bow. It's the same kind of casualness that Mya had, that all the servants here seem to have towards her and she knows she should be offended, but she isn't right now. She doesn't question that he knows her name – she's likely the only new person to come to Eyrie Manor in a long time.

“Who are you?”

“Jon Snow,” he nods again and it's then that a large raven squawks and flies over and lands on his shoulder, which makes her give another startled gasp. “Sorry,” he says again, giving a glare at the bird who seems to be chanting _snow_ and _corn_.

“You brought my trunk up,” she manages to say, though it's not what she had intended. She _wanted_ to ask why he has a raven, of all things. “Thank you.”

He gives a slight shrug and without seeming to think about it, digs in his pocket and brings out what looks like a handful of dried corn and holds it in his palm and the raven pecks at it.

“Well,” she says after a moment of silence. “I have to go.” She remembers then that she's quite lost and she turns back to Jon and says, “actually, could you point me out of here? I can't remember how I got in.”

He gives her a set of simple turns and she follows them out of the gardens and when she's free, she nearly breaks into a run to get back inside. In her room, she pushes the tapestry aside and ducks through the door and makes her way down the hall and she ignores the cries that ring out twice while she does, echoing through the abandoned corridor. In the room that might be her mother's, she finds the key in the jewelry box and when it's in her hand, she thinks _yes_ , it is the same kind of metal the lock had been, it _must_ be the key.

After she gets back to her room, she's just about to head back out when a knock comes at the door. It's Mr. Brune and he has a tray with dinner on it and she realizes the sun is setting already, though it's not that late in the day. Her heart sinks when she realizes she has to wait until tomorrow to go to the garden, she certainly won't be able to find her way back in the dark.

After he's set the tray on the table, he turns to go and she remembers what she wanted to ask. “I heard crying,” she says, and Mr. Brune pauses in his movements. “Who's crying?”

“No one,” he dismisses, “it's just the wind.”

She wants to argue, it _isn't_ the wind, but she can tell he doesn't want to talk about it. Perhaps she'll get more out of Mya.

“I'll wake you tomorrow,” Mr. Brune frowns. “Early, it's best to get to town as early as possible.”

“Town!” she almost cries and she clutches the key in her pocket until it nearly cuts into her palm. She doesn't _want_ to go to town, she wants to unlock the garden! But Mr. Brune gives her a look and she knows she can't tell him why she doesn't want to go and so she says nothing at all. He leaves and she eats her dinner alone.

* * *

Mya is much too cheerful in the morning.

After Sansa has eaten breakfast, Mya chattering away the whole time, she's helped into one of her too thin dresses and Mya gives her the slightly too large coat and hat to borrow again today.

“We'll get you your own in town,” she promises. “This color does nothin' for you.”

Downstairs, there's a cart readied, not the fancier carriage she had taken from Gulltown. This one is clearly for the servants to go to town in and they seem to think nothing of setting her in it. Jon Snow is in the driver's seat and Mya hops up next to him, which leaves Sansa alone in the back.

She watches them talk (or, Mya mostly talks, but every once in a while Jon says something back that usually makes Mya laugh). Sansa catches bits of the conversation, but it seems to be mostly about people in town that Sansa doesn't know and so instead she sits back and ignores them and watches the scenery roll by and she wonders if Jon and Mya are sweethearts.

On the way, she thinks about what might be in the garden. She remembers the picture of her mother and Lysa and thinks perhaps the swing is in the garden. What else will be there? She knows there's at least one tree.

All too soon the cart comes to a stop and Jon helps her down and she knows she shouldn't be surprised by how rough his hands are, but she is anyway. She's only ever touched hands through gloves, mostly, or it was her Septa or the girls from school. One time Joffrey had held her hand and she believes his skin was softer than her own.

“Thank you,” she remembers her manners and inclines her head at him the way her schools taught her.

“You don't have to thank him,” Mya teases and punches Jon's arm lightly. “Jon does whatever we ask him to.”

“And I don't get paid nearly enough,” he sighs back and Mya laughs. Are they sweethearts or friends? Sansa can't tell and she realizes she doesn't have a basis for recognizing either. She doesn't have any friends and she feels her face heat up, like Mya and Jon will be able to tell that no one has ever liked her enough to be her friend. “Alright, I've got things to do in town, _actual_ work,” Jon gives a half smile at Mya, who rolls her eyes. “Meet me back here at one? That should give you plenty of time.”

“Sure, one,” Mya waves her hand dismissively at him and takes Sansa's arm and begins to pull her towards a street lined with shops.

“I mean it,” Sansa hears Jon call after them. “ _One_.”

* * *

Sansa has a small bit of her own money that Robb had sent her, which she had reluctantly taken out of her trunk this morning. She isn't sure why the money is important to her, but she doesn't want to spend it on clothing, she feels like she should save it for something _more_ , though what that is she doesn't know. She was relieved, though, when Mr. Brune had pressed a coin purse into Mya's hands for the purchases (Sansa wonders if that means Mr. Brune had talked to her aunt, if Aunt Lysa had given him the money for her, though she still has yet to summon Sansa to her rooms or come downstairs).

She spends the day trying on dresses in at least three different shops. She's never picked out her own clothes and so she doesn't know what to look for and Mya and the shopkeepers give her looks when she doesn't know the state of her own wardrobe.

“Guess we'll have you get you all of it,” Mya reasons. “Underthings and all. And a hat and a coat of your own. And mittens for the winter, and some good boots.”

She's exhausted by the end of it and when she sees the clock in the town center, she pulls on Mya's arm. Mya is distracted by something in a shop window and barely looks at her.

“Mya,” she points at the town clock. “It's after one, we need to get back.”

“Oh, Jon'll wait,” Mya grins. “Though he'll be a great grump when we do get there.”

Sansa has never been late for anything in her life, it has always been meticulously scheduled by her teachers and her Septa and she feels anxious and keeps looking at the clock and eventually Mya gives in and they head back. As Mya predicted, Jon is leaning against the cart with a scowl.

“You're late,” he gives Mya a dark look and takes their packages from them and begins to load them into the cart, next to whatever he had purchased in town.

“Thank Miss Sansa or I'd've been even later.”

Jon looks at her and gives her a half smile like he'd given to Mya earlier and Sansa feels her face heat up again. She isn't sure why, being punctual isn't something to be embarrassed about, but she finds she needs to duck her head anyway so that he won't see. If he notices it, he doesn't say anything and he helps her into the cart before hopping up into the driver's seat and they head back.

* * *

By the time they get home and everything is sorted (Jon is kind enough to carry her packages up to her room and she's thankful that the maids have come in and cleaned and picked up her shift and underthings from last night that she'd left on the floor) it's too late to go out to the garden. Once again, she'll have to wait, and she spends a restless night thinking about it and what she'll do if this _isn't_ the right key.

* * *

It is the right key.

Her heart is in her throat as she slides the key into the lock and twists it and her relief nearly turns her knees to jelly when she hears it click open. She pushes at the wooden door and it takes some force, as plants have grown over the door and leaves and branches have built up behind it. She gets it open enough to slip through and when she's inside, it feels like she's stepped into another world.

The air feels different here, though she knows, rationally, that it's the same air as on the other side of the door. There's a massive tree near the center and it's clear that everything had been overgrown at one point, but it's all dead now. There's brown everywhere, dried leaves crunching under her new boots as she makes her way forward. Brown, leafless bushes, dead unidentifiable plants, even the big tree has been stripped bare. There are no signs of life anywhere.

It's dead.

_It's all dead_.

There's a despair in her that she wasn't expecting and she realizes that what she had been feeling for nearly two days had been _hope_. She doesn't think she's ever felt hopeful before. Or, if she has, it was so long ago that she doesn't remember.

But it's gone now and the garden is dead.

She can't bear to be here anymore and she nearly trips over the uneven pave stones of the path back to the door. She stumbles but doesn't fall and there's a hot anger rising up in her chest – at the garden, for being dead. At Aunt Lysa and grandfather, for locking the garden away in the first place. At her mother, for dying. At herself, for getting her hopes up.

_It's just a stupid garden_ , she tells herself as she pulls the red door closed behind her. She feels something prick at her eyes and she's horrified to realize that it's tears (she never cries, she doesn't know how to).

The cold air is harsh in her lungs as she takes deep breaths to stave off the tears and she _runs_ away from the garden and she doesn't stop until she's well away, at the edge of the moor. Off in the distance, she sees a herd of sheep and a man and it takes her a moment to realize it's Jon. He's sitting alone on the moors and it looks like he's eating as the sheep graze and Ghost keeps an eye on them. It's a sheepdog, she realizes.

She's unsure how long she watches him but eventually he looks in her direction and sees her. Of course he does, her new coat might be a dark blue, but her new hat is a much brighter shade, and the sun is out so she's sure her hair is bright as well. He gets up and seems to shout something at Ghost and then makes his way over.

She should leave, she thinks. She doesn't want to talk to Jon, what would she even say? She can still feel the tears behind her eyes and anger churns in her stomach and she doesn't want to be around this stranger when she feels so out of sorts. But running away from him would be rude and so she stands rooted to the spot as he makes his way over, a frown on his face.

“Miss Sansa,” he says when he's close enough. “You shouldn't be out this far, the moors can be dangerous.”

She's at the edge of them, where the hedgerows and stone paths give out to open grass and rolling hills and strong winds and sky as far as the eye can see.

“Everything ok?” he asks when she doesn't respond, and his frown deepens.

_I found a garden_ , she wants to say. _I found my mother's garden and it's just as dead as she is._

He looks down and nods to her hand and says “what's that?”

She follows his gaze and finds the key clutched in her hand, her knuckles white with how hard she's gripping it.

“A key,” she whispers, she doesn't trust her voice to be any louder. “To a garden.” From the look on his face, he seems to know _which_ garden she means, but he doesn't tell her she shouldn't have gone in. “It's dead, though.” She tries to say it like she doesn't care and she wonders what has become of her. She's never cared about anything before, why does she care about a garden that she only learned about two days ago?

“Doubt that.”

For a moment his words don't register but when they do, she looks up at him sharply. “I saw it,” she tells him, her voice imperious, the tone she used to use with her Septa when she was angry. Jon doesn't seem to notice or care.

“Things are rarely so dead they can't be brought back,” he says and she wants to tell him that yes, they can, but she can't find her voice. “If you want, I could check.”

“You would know if it's alive or not?” she breathes in disbelief and he nods. She takes a moment to decide, but there's something rising again in her. _Hope_ , she knows what it is now and she wants it to go away, but it's in her already, she can't push it out. “You can't tell _anyone.”_

He holds his hands up and gives her one of his half smiles and says “promise”.

On unsteady feet, she leads him back. Or, he leads her, she got lost again when she ran. He knows where the garden wall is, but he doesn't know where the door is, and when she sees the ivy covered stone again, she takes the lead and he follows her. The patch in the ivy where the door is looks no different from the rest, but she knows and she pushes the ivy aside and opens the door and he follows her in.

He looks around and she waits with bated breath. She isn't sure why she wants him to like it, she isn't sure why she's afraid he'll laugh at her for coming here.

He makes his way over to a small bush near the wall and studies one of the bare branches for a moment, bending it back and forth. Then he bends down and takes a small knife out of his boot and he cuts into the branch, just a bit.

“Here,” he says and beckons her to come nearer.

She shouldn't, everything her teachers and her Septa had ever taught her screams at her not to walk closer to a strange man with a knife, but she does it anyway.

“See,” he bends the branch and where he cut shows a bright white inside with a ring of green around the edge under the bark, “it's wick.”

“ _Wick_ ,” she repeats. “What does that mean?”

He gives her a real smile then, and not a half one, and says “it means it's alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is possibly the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written and I have no idea if anyone else wants to read this. But it's been a real stressful set of weeks and I have wrapped myself in a cocoon of comforting things, like The Secret Garden. It is one of my favorite childhood books and movies and since writing is something that helps me deal with depression and anxiety, I wrote this. If you've made it through, thank you for reading!
> 
> I wasn't going to post this until I had the whole thing completed (there will be four chapters in total, one for each season), but I'm feeling more hopeful today and figured why not.
> 
> (title and lyrics are from signs by bloc party)


	2. Winter

_bluebells in the late December_

_I see signs now all the time_

* * *

Winter comes and she must wait.

The garden is alive, Jon had said, not dead. Some things likely were, some plants that only bloomed once a year, but the heart of it is very much alive. He'd said that with enough work, she could bring it back to life. Sometimes, things aren't so dead that they can't be brought back.

But it will take time and winter must pass and so she must wait.

* * *

One night she hears the wind again, except that it _isn't_ the wind, she's sure of it. It sounds exactly like the cries of a child and this night it goes on for what seems like hours until she finally throws her blankets aside in a huff and climbs out of bed. She dons her robe and shoves her feet into her boots and ducks through the door behind the tapestry.

This late at night, in the dead of winter, the hallway is colder than it's ever felt, but she makes her way towards the noise. Unlike the previous times she's been down here, she has nothing to distract her and the cries don't stop and so they get louder and louder the further she goes.

Finally she reaches a door and she is _certain_ it isn't the wind, no wind has ever sounded like this. She pushes it open slowly and peers through into a darkened room lit only by a fireplace near a large four poster bed just like her own. In the bed is a very small child and it takes her a moment of study to realize it's a boy. He is so small and thin and pale and he lays in the center of the bed and thrashes and cries out.

The door makes a noise as she moves it and the crying suddenly stops and the little boy sits up in bed and looks straight at her, tears still wet on his cheeks. For a moment they simply stare at each other before he says in a small, thin voice, “are you a ghost?”

“No,” she says and steps fully into the room. “Are you?”

“No,” he huffs, indignant, his face pinching into a look of disdain. “How could _I_ be a ghost?”

“Well you're _wailing_ like one,” she tells him, suddenly annoyed with him. “You woke me up.”

“I did?” he tilts his head at her, his anger vanished. “Who are you?”

“I'm Sansa Stark. Who are you?”

He straightens up and says in an imperious voice, “I am Robin Arryn. I'm master of this house.”

Arryn? Her aunt's married name. “I think you're my cousin.”

“Cousin?” he repeats, looking stunned. “I didn't know I had a cousin.”

“Neither did I.”

He studies her for a moment, back still straight and stiff, face serious (or, as serious as a sickly little boy can be). “Come closer,” he commands and for a moment she wants to say no simply because she doesn't like his tone, but she's curious too, and so she does.

“You have red hair,” he says. “My mother has red hair. Or, I think she does.”

“You _think_ she does?”

“I've only seen her a few times and that was when I was very small,” he tells her and Sansa wants to remind him that he is _still_ very small. She wants to place his age at six or seven, but from what she can remember, Lord Arryn died nearly ten years ago and so Robin must be at least that.

She doesn't know what to say so instead she asks “why were you crying?”

“Because I'm going to die,” he tells her simply.

“ _Die_?”

“Yes, I'm sick just like my father was,” he nods, like she should already know this. “They say I'll die very young."

“Who says?” she asks and sits on the edge of his bed.

“Everyone.”

“Well,” she frowns, an anger taking shape in her chest at the idea of _everyone_ telling a little boy he's to die. “If everyone told _me_ I should die, I wouldn't do it.”

He stares at her and she knows, deep inside, that some people have no choice in the matter. But to scare a child so bad that he cries and screams all night about his own death? And from what he's said, Aunt Lysa does not come to see him. It's one thing for her to have no interest in meeting Sansa, but to not come and see her own dying son?

“Where did you come from?” he asks finally. “Have you always been here? Why didn't I know about you?”

She has her own questions, but it's very late and she's tired and so she tells Robin that she'll come back tomorrow and she slips back through the door behind the tapestry and down the long hall and back to her room and she doesn't hear the crying again for the rest of the night.

* * *

“I can't believe I had a cousin and father never _told_ me,” she pulls angrily at a snarl of dead plants, ripping them from the ground and taking chunks of dirt with it.

“Careful,” Jon reaches over and takes it from her, knocking the excess dirt back into the garden. “There are some alive things mixed in, you'll have to be more careful if you want to keep them.”

He's not looking at her and she eyes him suspiciously. “Did _you_ know about Robin?”

He sighs. “Everyone knows about the little lord,” he shrugs and her anger flares so hot she wants to scream, but she doesn't. _Everyone_ knew about him except her!

This morning, before she came out to the garden, she had seen Mr. Brune and Mya and a few of the other servants rushing off in the direction of Robin's room, whispering to each other. Robin had told her the day she'd gone to his room to talk that the servants tend to him and give him his treatments. Mr. Brune had lied to her.

“Well _I_ didn't,” she huffs. “He's _my_ cousin, why should I not know about him?”

“Maybe they were trying to spare you,” Jon suggests softly and she bristles at his tone. She isn't one of his animals that he needs to treat with a soft hand so that she doesn't spook.

“Spare me from what?”

Jon kneels back on the ground and continues to pull out the dead plants, throwing them into a wheelbarrow he had brought. “Well, they say he'll die soon, perhaps they didn't want you to get attached and have to lose someone else.”

“They don't get to decide,” she snaps.

He looks up at her with his level gaze that somehow always makes her feel calmer and says “I agree,” which throws her off. She wants to keep her anger, she wants to shout and stomp her foot and boil in it.

“I don't even think he's that sick,” she mutters instead, kneeling back down as well and pulling at the dead things with more care. Jon had shown her the difference, had shown her what to look for, and now she makes sure she doesn't accidentally remove living things, too. She can sense Jon looking at her and so she explains, “no one who's about to die could scream like he does.”

Jon laughs at that and she feels a sort of thrill go through her. No one has ever laughed at something she's said, not really. They've laughed _at_ her, but always at her expense.

“I've never met him,” Jon says after they've dug for a while. Their wheelbarrow is nearly full and they've cleared a good swath of the garden. When spring comes, it should be ready for planting. “Brune doesn't much like me. I'm good enough to labor around the manor, but not good enough to wait on the little lord.”

There's a crooked smile on his face but it doesn't reach his eyes and she doesn't like it.

“Mr. Brune is horrible,” she tells him. She doesn't like Mr. Brune, he's gruff and rude (he only ever seems to thaw around Mya, softening ever so slightly in her presence).

* * *

Winter passes like this.

On the days where it's snowing or too cold, she goes to visit Robin. They play board games and cards, sometimes she reads him stories from books she's found in the library. She likes this more than the games, going to the library and scanning through the spines before selecting something that sounds interesting. Then she sits in the chair near Robin's bed and reads to him and they get lost in the stories together.

Sansa thinks she used to read more when she was younger, but she hasn't in so long and the she finds herself enjoying the stories more than she thought she would. When she discovers a book of northern fairytales, she doesn't even wait to get to Robin's room, she sits herself at a window seat in the library and devours it, the words striking something deep inside her. Perhaps her mother had read her these stories before she died, when Winterfell was still their home. She reads them to Robin and watches him lay back and close his eyes as he imagines, as the stories play out behind his eyelids.

She learns that Lord Arryn had died of some mysterious illness that everyone insists Robin has as well, some wasting thing that will slowly eat away at Robin's lungs. But Sansa has never heard him cough, and the only time he struggles to breathe is when he gets too excited and tries to move too much. He's told her that he's been in his bed for nearly his whole life and this sends a pang of horror through her. They give him milk of the poppy and that never seems to help him, it only makes him tired and weak. His mother never comes to see him; Robin tells her that Lysa is also sickly and stays shut away in her rooms.

On days that it's sunny out, she goes to the garden. Sometimes, when he is able to, Jon joins her and she enjoys these days most of all. It surprises her, really, for she has always been a solitary creature, and she tells herself it's because Jon knows what to do with the garden. That's why she likes his company so much.

He doesn't talk much, but when he does it always means something. He teaches her about the plants they find and he tells her about the animals he cares for and the various things he does for Eyrie Manor that aren't really a part of his job, but he does them anyway.

“I'm lucky I found this place,” he tells her one day as they've stopped for lunch. Cook had given her a basket of food to take out and Mya had snuck in some extra lemon cakes.

“You're northern,” she tells him, though it's more of a question.

“Grew up near Castle Black,” he says. “Come down to the Vale a few years ago looking for work.”

“There was no work up north?” she asks. She finds she's curious about the north, but doesn't know how to ask him about it.

“Not as much, and I think maybe I wanted a change of scenery.”

“Doesn't your family miss you?”

“Don't have any,” he shrugs and she feels stupid for asking. “Never knew my father and my mother died when I was thirteen.”

At that exact moment, his raven (who's name she's learned is just _Raven_ , which she finds silly and not at all funny like Mya and Jon seem to think) lands on the ground near their feet. Jon sighs and pulls out a handful of corn that he always seems to have in his pocket and tosses it on the ground for Raven to eat.

“Where'd you get him?” She's learned from a book in the library that ravens are not native to the Vale and so he must have gotten it in the north and once again, she wants to know more about the north but can't seem to directly ask.

For a while Jon is silent and he seems to be studying her and she finds her face heating under his gaze. “When my mother got sick,” he begins after a while, “I took a position in a nearby lord's house. It's not what I wanted to do, I _wanted_ to work with animals, but being a serving boy in a lord's house paid more. The raven belonged to Lord Mormont.”

Sansa nods like she knows who Lord Mormont is, though she doesn't. Her father was a northern lord and Sansa was born there, but she really knows nothing about it or the families that live there and she finds herself embarrassed by this and so she pretends like she knows who Jon is talking about.

“Mormont was old, his son had died a long time ago,” Jon continues on, he doesn't seem to notice her embarrassment. “After my mother died, I kept working there. I could've started an apprenticeship, but I stayed on because...” he doesn't seem to know how to explain and a thousand questions stick in Sansa's throat. She wants to know _everything_ , she realizes, but surely it would be rude to ask too many questions. “Mormont took to me, I became his personal steward until his death. When he died, the estate went to some distant nephew, but he left me a small bit of money and the raven.”

“And then you came south?” she ventures after it looks like he won't continue.

He nods. “For a bit I thought about joining the army. I had no real skills, I was never trained as a proper steward, I think Mormont was just lonely and wanted company. So it was either find work where I could or join the army.”

His words come out almost disdainful and she bristles at his tone and says “my brother is in the army.”

“Aye,” Jon nods, not looking at her. He's done eating and he's leaning back on both hands, staring out at the big tree in the center of the garden. “Nothin' wrong with being in the army, but it's different for me.”

“Different?” She's not sure why, but she feels defensive. He sighs.

“Back then we were on the brink of war with New Ghis, if you remember.” (She nods, though she does _not_ remember. Once again, she is ignorant of things that everyone else seems to know.) “I'm sure they gave your brother a nice rank and a comfortable assignment, but if I had joined and we _had_ gone to war, I would've been thrown to the trenches and I didn't want to die so that some rich lords who wanted a better trade deal could get even richer.”

For a moment she can't breathe, and she feels her hands shaking and the terrible sensation of tears stinging at her eyes. She wants to tell him it's not true, but she knows nothing of war and _didn't_ they give Robb a higher rank when he joined? _Wasn't_ he stationed in Pentos, nowhere near New Ghis or any of their enemies? Robb was the son of a lord and she knows, logically, that this brings certain favor to him but she's never heard it put so bluntly before.

She can feel the tears welling in her eyes and she tries to blink them away. She hates the feeling and she doesn't want Jon to see her cry and think she's weak. But she finds she can't help it and she doesn't know if she wants to cry over the accusation that Robb is an entitled lord or the idea of Jon dying in a trench in some foreign war zone so that people like her could continue living in ignorance (perhaps it is her own entitlement that she wants to cry for).

Jon lets out a breath and she sees movement and she turns just in time to find him leaning forward, a frown creasing his brow. “Sorry,” he murmurs and then his hand is lifting to her face, “I didn't mean...”

The pad of his thumb is rough against her cheek and she realizes that tears are slipping from her eyes, unwanted. He keeps brushing them away, his hand cradling her face so carefully; she should pull away from the gesture but she can't and for some reason it makes her want to cry _more_.

Finally, her senses return to her and she pulls back from him and wipes at her own cheeks furiously and she can hear herself making excuses and packing the food basket back up. Jon doesn't try to stop her as she rushes out of the garden and back to the manor, though they've hardly gotten through what they had planned to for the day.

She's embarrassed by her behavior and shamed by her ignorance and she's not sure she ever wants to see Jon Snow again.

* * *

It's a week later when Mr. Brune comes to find her and tells her that her aunt wants to see her.

The words stun her and she stares at Mr. Brune until he gruffly tells her to get dressed and she remembers she's still in her nightgown and robe (she had been sulking in her room, but she refuses to acknowledge this).

Mya is with him and Mr. Brune waits in the hall while Mya helps Sansa into her best dress. Sansa feels nervous, her heart beats furiously and her hands tremble. Why now? What could have prompted her aunt to summon her after _months_ of her being here?

Perhaps Lysa has found out that she's been in the garden. Perhaps Lysa means to send her away for breaking the rules.

The entire walk through the manor and up to Lysa's rooms in the other wing is tense and she spends the whole time trying to keep her nerves under control; she feels like her stomach is twisting inside her and bile rises in her throat. She shouldn't _care_ about being sent away (she _doesn't_ ).

Mr. Brune knocks and she hears a low voice but can't make out the words and he opens the door and leads her inside. He leaves her there, standing just inside the door that shuts behind her. Lysa's room is dark, the curtains drawn against the sunlit day (it's a day Sansa would have spent in the garden, if she'd had the courage to face it and who she might find there). The fireplace is lit, the flames flickering and popping, the only noise in the room. Lysa sits in a chair facing the fire and Sansa stands by the door, unsure what to do or say.

Surely an hour must go by as she stands there, as Lysa sits there, both in silence, before Lysa turns slowly in her chair.

Sansa isn't sure what she expected, but the woman in front of her is gaunt and pale, just as sickly looking as her son. Her hair, from what Sansa can see in the light, is a shade darker than Sansa's own, pulled back into a severe bun. Her dress is black; her husband died a decade ago and still she wears mourning colors. Or perhaps it's for her father (or, Sansa's stomach swoops at the thought, her sister).

“By the gods,” Lysa's voice is a whisper in the dark room. “You look just like her.”

Sansa's throat is so dry she can barely swallow, but she manages to say, “I wouldn't know.”

“You wouldn't know?” Lysa repeats, almost like she's talking to herself. Her eyes seem glassy and far away.

“Father burned all her pictures.”

“I see. I was sorry to hear about your father, he was a good man.”

_Was he_? Sansa can barely recall anything about her father. She knows people used to say he was honorable, but she so rarely spoke to him. She remembers when she was younger, she would sneak out of her room at night and go downstairs and she would peek into the study where father held his business meetings, just to see him. Night was the only time he came home, after the children were put to bed. Sometimes, after his business associates left, he would stay in his study and she would watch him for hours while she was supposed to be sleeping. She never dared go in, though. He hated seeing her.

Lysa stands from her chair suddenly and Sansa almost takes a step back, but Lysa instead goes to a small writing table and digs through one of the drawers until she pulls out a stack of photographs. She turns and beckons Sansa over.

With hesitant steps, she goes and Lysa hands her the photographs. The top one is of Lysa and Catelyn, a little older than the photograph on the swing she had found months earlier. The next, of mother and father. In it, mother is pregnant and father looks _happy_ (Sansa doesn't think she ever saw him smile). _Robb_ , she thinks, staring at her mother's rounded belly. The other photographs are mostly of her mother when she was young, usually with Lysa.

“Catelyn and I were very close,” Lysa tells her when she takes the photographs back. “We were very close until we weren't. Are you close with your sister? With Arya?”

Sansa can't decide what she should say, if she should lie or if it would even make a difference. In the end, she shakes her head _no_ and Lysa nods and her eyes look sad.

“What do you mean, _until you weren't_?” She's surprised at her own boldness, but they're talking about her _mother_ and just like with the north, she wants to _know_ things.

Lysa puts the photographs back in the drawer and moves back to sit in her chair. “I was angry,” she says into the fire, her voice dropping low, like she's talking to herself again, like she's forgotten Sansa is there. “I let a boy come between us. I spent so many years hating her over something she couldn't control, and then it was too late.”

“My father?”

“No,” Lysa lets out a breathless laugh. “I loved a boy who loved your mother who didn't even know of his affections. And yet I blamed her that he didn't love me back. How foolish it all seems now.”

There's more silence and Sansa wants to run, wants to open the door and flee back to her rooms. She wants to go to the garden and push her hands into the cold dirt and try to feel the life that Jon says is still there. She wants to be anywhere but here in this dark room with this ghost of a woman.

After a moment, Lysa straightens her back and seems to come back to the present. She turns in her chair to look at Sansa, who had been slowly backing towards the door. “I wanted to see how you were faring,” Lysa says, her gaze suddenly steady and clear for a woman who looks so weak. “That's why I called you here.”

“I'm well. Everyone is kind to me.”

“And you like your room?”

“Yes, the tapestries are lovely.”

Lysa nods. “Good. That's good. Is there anything else you need?”

“No,” Sansa begins, but then something stirs in her. “Well, actually. I was wondering, in the spring, when the weather is right, could I, if it's not too much trouble, I was thinking, could I have a bit of earth?”

“A bit of earth?”

“To plant things. Flowers. Vegetables maybe. There are so many gardens here, I was wondering if I could have one of my own.” The words all come out of her in a rush and she fears for a moment that she's overstepped, that Lysa will tell her to get out, to leave Eyrie Manor.

Instead, Lysa looks stricken and her eyes seem to fill with tears. “A garden,” she whispers. “Yes, of course, you can have a garden. Have any garden you like.” With that she seems to crumple in on herself and she waves her hands towards the door and Sansa nearly stumbles back and opens it.

Mr. Brune is standing in the hall and he looks in and goes to see if Lysa is alright, but Sansa doesn't wait. She runs, as fast as her slippered feet can take her, through the halls and down the stairs and finally outside. The cold air tears at her lungs and there's a stitch in her side and her head feels dizzy but she keeps running until she's at the garden and the door is open, just slightly.

She was not here, but Jon came anyway, and he's in the garden clearing dead vines off one of the marble statues when he hears her.

“Sansa,” he steps off the ladder and comes to her, where she's taking deep, nearly gasping breaths and trying to still her wildly beating heart. “What's wrong?”

“I saw my aunt,” she finds herself clutching at his arm when he gets near, if only to hold herself upright against the stitch in her side. “I spoke to Lysa, she said I could have the garden. Well, I didn't tell her _which_ garden I was going to take, but she said I could have _any_.”

“Sansa,” Jon brings both of his hands to her shoulders. “You should go back inside, you'll catch a fever.”

She realizes then that she's in her best dress with no coat or hat or gloves and her fine velvet slippers are soaked and ruined with mud but she doesn't _care_ and she feels something rising up from deep in her chest and then a noise bursts out of her mouth and she realizes she's _laughing_. Jon seems confused by her, but she can't stop and she slaps a hand over her mouth but it makes no difference. She hadn't realized how scared she had been that Lysa would send her away and she feels giddy and lightheaded with relief and she can't stop laughing. She doesn't remember the last time she laughed.

Jon is still frowning in confusion and he takes his own coat off (a shabby thing that she can see has been repaired more times than a coat ought to be) and he wraps it around her shoulders and turns her back to the entrance of the garden and he walks her back to the manor as she gets her laughter under control.

Mya must have seen them, because she meets them outside and she gives Jon a look and Sansa can feel Jon shrugging and his utter bafflement makes her break out into another round of giggles.

“Are you drunk?” Mya asks with a shocked laugh and Sansa shakes her head no.

No, she isn't drunk, she's relieved, but it's also more than that. There's a series of emotions swirling around in her that she can't identify, she's never felt _so much_ all at once.

Jon hands her off and at the last second she remembers his coat and she hands it back to him and watches another look pass between Mya and Jon that she doesn't think she's supposed to see. Mya leads her inside, past the kitchen, and calls out to Cook to have something hot sent up to Sansa's room.

When they arrive, Mya helps her out of her dress and slippers. Its a dress from King's Landing, it's her nicest one and now it's stained in mud. “Looks like these are ruined, too,” Mya says, holding up her slippers.

“Oh well,” Sansa sighs. “I like my boots better anyway.”

Mya gives her a curious look and shakes her head. “Well, Miss Sansa, you get right under the covers and warm up.” Mya had wrapped her in her robe and is tucking the blankets around her when a kitchen maid comes in with a tray of soup and some bread. Mya takes it from her and sits on the bed while Sansa eats and when she's done, Mya takes the tray away and sets it on the table. “Rest a bit,” she commands and Sansa finds herself nodding. “You've had quite the day.”

“I saw my aunt.”

“I know.”

“Is Mr. Brune angry with me?” Sansa remembers how she'd run past him.

“Ah, leave Lothor to me,” Mya grins. She sits on the edge of the bed again and brings a hand up and brushes some of Sansa's hair back behind her ear. “Did everything go alright with your aunt?”

“I think so. She didn't send me away.”

“You thought she would?”

Sansa gives a halfhearted shrug and stares down at her hands in her lap and she lets the admission slip out. “No one ever really wants me around.”

Mya doesn't say anything to that. Instead, she leans forward and presses a kiss to the top of Sansa's head. It's something she's never felt before and the strange sensation of tears pricking her eyes is back.

“Get some rest,” Mya says softly and stands to retrieve the tray of empty dishes.

“Thank you,” Sansa calls after her, the words feel strange in her mouth, she thinks she's never meant them before.

The book of northern fairytales is on the nighstand and she picks it up and tries to read, but instead she falls asleep quickly.

* * *

She wakes in the middle of the night, not from Robin's cries, but from a dream. In her dream, she and Arya had been in the garden, taking turns pushing each other on the swing and they'd been laughing.

It's dark when she wakes and her aunt's words come back to her. _We were very close until we weren't._

She and Arya had never been close, they fought all the time and she wonders, for the first time, if perhaps Arya had been just as angry as she was. If Arya was just as lonely, if she felt just as unwanted and unwelcome. The thought sits heavy in Sansa's chest and she stares at the canopy of her bed for a very long time.

For the first time in her life, she wonders what it would have been like if mother hadn't died. Would they have stayed in Winterfell? Would she and Arya be close? Would Robb have joined the army? Would father be alive, be the man she saw in Lysa's picture, smiling and carefree? Would she have more siblings? Would they have been happy?

* * *

“Are you and Jon sweethearts?”

She blurts the question out without preamble as Mya is putting on her coat.

They're going to town today and Jon is outside with the cart and horses while she and Mya finish getting ready. She isn't sure why she's asking, really. It's just that Mya and Jon seem to have some sort of secret language, they talk in looks and gestures and jokes that she isn't a part of.

“What?” Mya bursts into bright laughter. “Me and Jon? Gods no.”

“Why not? Is he sweet on someone else?”

Mya levels a look at her that Sansa can't decipher, something appraising. “Not that he's told me,” Mya finally says. “But him and I are like brother and sister. We hit it off right away when he came here, but not like _that_.” Mya scrunches up her face in an over dramatic look of disgust and it makes Sansa giggle, and then they both are.

Once outside, Jon throws up his hands and says “ _finally_ ,” and that causes Sansa and Mya to break into another round of laughter.

It's a strange experience, laughing with another girl, but one that Sansa finds she doesn't mind.

* * *

“Davos is the man you want to see,” Jon guides her to a shop off the main road. “He'll have what you want.”

Mya has gone to barter with the grocer and Jon has no errands today so he is taking her somewhere, but won't tell her where. The shop he takes her to, _Seaworth's_ , is filled to the brim with every color imaginable. She'd lived in King's Landing most of her life and so she recognizes the wares – masks from Asshai, necklaces from Volantis, perfumes from Lys. All things that were common at street vendors in King's Landing but seem wildly out of place here.

She finds herself delighted; she's never truly appreciated the beauty and colors of the items. There's a fan with roses patterned on it that catches her eye and she pauses it at for a moment, but Jon is already steering her towards something else. They reach a display rack and she looks at the small paper packets, each with a flower illustrated on it.

“Seeds,” Jon explains. “Any kind you want, Davos can get.”

She wants to buy every one, but she knows she shouldn't spend all of her money at once and so she picks up every packet and studies the illustrations and when she finally has her selections, she takes them to the counter where a kindly looking man waits. He greets Jon and then looks at the packets she placed on the counter.

“Ah, so _you're_ the lady who wants flowers,” the man winks at Jon and when she turns to look at him, the tips of his ears are red and he's scowling at the shopkeeper. “Well, nearer to spring I can get you some bulbs, too, if you want.”

“I'd like that very much,” she can't keep the smile off her face and she takes out her coin purse and carefully counts out the sum that the shopkeeper asks for. She wonders briefly if Robb would be upset that this is how she's spending the money he sent her, but she doesn't care. The seed packets are tucked safely away in her bag and she and Jon leave the shop.

“Thank you,” she turns to Jon when they're back in the alley. He shrugs and ducks his head and can't seem to meet her eye.

“We should get back to the cart, though I suspect Mya will be late.”

As they walk back to the cart, she hugs her bag to her stomach and she can feel the crinkling of the seed packets within and her heart beats forcefully within her chest. Soon spring will be here and she and Jon can plant them; she can almost feel the life radiating from the seeds.

Mya isn't there and Jon sighs and gives her an apologetic half smile. Without quite realizing what she's doing, she leans up on her toes and presses her lips to his cheek – or, it would have been his cheek if he hadn't been turning his head and her lips land at the corner of his mouth instead. He stares at her as she steps back and neither of them say anything.

When Mya finally arrives fifteen minutes later, Sansa is already seated in the cart as Jon busies himself checking the rigging of the horses for the thousandth time. If Mya senses anything strange, she doesn't mention it and they head back to the manor (the whole ride, Sansa stares at the scenery with her fingertips resting on her lips and she tries to focus on her plans for the garden instead of how breathless she feels).

* * *

One day she notices that there have been more sunny days than not, that there has not been snow on the ground, that there is a change in the air and she _knows_ spring is on the way. She doesn't know how she knows for sure, just that she can taste it. The seed packets tucked away in her dresser seem to hum with energy, she can sense them, though she can't see them. She thinks she can sense it everywhere outside, too, in the little vegetable patch near the kitchens, in the tidy beds along the hedgerows, in _the_ garden. There's something building, a sort of magic, life coming back to the world.

* * *

“I saw you comin' out of Master Robin's room,” Mya says quietly one day as Sansa eats breakfast. Mya has been idly stealing bits of her breakfast for herself, but Sansa doesn't mind.

“Am I not supposed to see my own cousin?” she finds herself adopting a defensive tone. She knows Mr. Brune doesn't want her in there, otherwise he would have told her about Robin.

“He's a sickly little boy, there can't be too many people comin' and goin'...”

“I don't think he is,” Sansa sets her teacup down so abruptly that the tea sloshes out. This is something she has become more and more certain of the more she visits Robin. “He's told me they give him milk of the poppy and I read in the library that it's for pain, but Robin never complains of pain. It just makes him sleepy and weak.”

“Maybe he never complains of pain _because_ he's takin' the medicine,” Mya reasons and Sansa can feel her anger rising. “He's been takin' it his whole life, ever since Lord Arryn died. They say Master Robin used to scream and scream all day long. I've heard that's when Missus Lysa shuttered herself up into her rooms, after her husband died and the doctor told her Master Robin wouldn't be too far behind. And not so long after her sister and father died, too.”

Mya sighs and stands, gathering up the half eaten dishes on the tray. “It's probably best you leave it alone.”

_But what if he isn't sick_ , Sansa thinks to herself as Mya leaves. The doctors said he would die soon and it's been ten years since then. What if all this time they have been going in circles – Robin is sickly and weak so they give him milk of the poppy, the milk of the poppy makes him sickly and weak. Round and round for years on end, causing nothing but loneliness and bitterness in it's wake, with everyone in the manor already convinced he's to die so why question it?

_But what if he isn't sick_? Sometimes, Jon had said, things aren't so dead they can't be brought back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so happy to hear that there are others who loved The Secret Garden as much as I do. Obviously, I'm not sticking with the story directly & I'm adding other stuff to it and I'm definitely making it less about Robin and more about Jon because that's what we're all here for, am I right?
> 
> Thank you all so much for the comments & kudos, it always gives me so much joy to know that people are enjoying what I put out, especially when I've loved writing it so much.


	3. Spring

_I see signs now all the time_

_that you're not dead, you're sleeping_

* * *

When the first lamb of the season comes into the world, she watches in horror and fascination.

At first she thinks the little thing is dead, it falls to the ground from it's mother and lays there for just a moment and Sansa's heart nearly stops with it. _Don't let it be dead_ , she thinks, but a moment later, the mother is licking at it's tiny head and Jon doesn't seem worried and when the lamb begins to move, she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Oh,” she says quietly and Jon turns to look at her. “I thought it would be noisier. I remember my Septa telling me it was painful and that women often screamed.”

“I think it's easier for animals.”

“Why?”

“Dunno,” Jon shrugs. “Seems like humans are always making things harder than they need to be.”

* * *

“I read Robin a fairytale,” she tells him. He's on a ladder propped up against the tree and he grunts in acknowledgment, though she can tell his focus is on his balance and not her. He had insisted on replacing the rope for the swing before she could use it, saying that it had been sitting unattended for years and was likely rotting away.

“I read him a fairytale from the north,” she calls up again after he's tied the second knot around a sturdy branch. He nods at her and begins to make his way down the ladder and she continues. “It was about the weirwood trees, it said that they contained whole universes within them. Do you think that's true? Did you ever see one?”

“Aye,” he reaches the ground and then sits on the swing to test it. “There were a few near where I grew up, though I can't say I saw any universes.”

“Well you wouldn't,” she tells him, “it's hidden inside them. Robin thought it was silly.”

“And you?” He's looking right at her and gently swaying back and forth on the swing.

She looks at the big tree in her garden and considers it. It isn't a weirwood, but she thinks, perhaps, there's a universe inside it all the same. According to her books, it's roots reach deep into the ground and soon the leaves that are currently buds will open and it's branches will provide cover and shelter for all sorts of creatures. And if she were to cut it open, she would see the rings that her books say are there, marking the passage of time. She wonders how long this tree has been here, how much it's seen. It knew her mother and _yes_ , she thinks, there is a universe inside it.

“I think,” she says slowly and she can't bring herself to look at Jon, though she thinks she knows him well enough by now to know that he won't make fun of her for her thoughts. “I think” she repeats, “that it's not just trees. I think maybe people have whole universes in them, too.”

When she was younger, before she came here, she thought people were all the same. That what she saw on the outside was who they were. Now she isn't so sure. And when she finally gets the courage to look at Jon, he's stood from the swing and he's staring at her and his grey eyes hold _more_ , an entire universe hidden away deep inside.

It seems as though he's about to answer, but before he can, a light rain begins. She is always surprised by the sudden showers, though everyone tells her it's normal, and they leave just as quickly as they come.

Jon takes her hand and they run to one of the archways in the stone wall and hide beneath it as the sky opens up. The rain is good, Jon has told her, and when they plant the seeds, the rain will help the flowers grow. It's almost time for planting, Jon says he thinks the last of the frosts have passed.

He wipes a few raindrops off her face with his thumb, though it isn't needed. They had managed to escape the worst of the rain, her dress has only a few spattered dark spots, as does Jon's shirt. All the same, she doesn't mind the feel of his fingertips brushing over her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. She wonders what they would feel like against her lips. She's so taken by the thought that when he runs them across her cheek again, she reaches up and catches his wrist and brings his hand to her mouth and she presses her lips to the pads of his fingers.

A sharp breath leaves him and she barely has time to register the removal of his hand before it's replaced by his lips. They're softer than his hands had been and for a moment she doesn't know what to do. She has never been kissed before and though she had heard the girls at school speak of it (among other things), none of them had described it well, she thinks.

No one had mentioned the need for her to press her body closer to his, the way his hands would pull her to him, one on the small of her back and the other threading through her hair. She thinks briefly that he will dislodge the pins from her hair but the thought is gone as soon as it arrives. There's a warmth inside her and she knows that if someone cut her open, they would see that she is wick, she is _alive_ , and she thinks there is a universe inside her, too.

Just like the rain and her thoughts, Jon is gone too soon and he pulls back and looks surprised with himself. “Sorry,” he says, though his voice sounds different, lower and more hesitant than she's ever heard it.

“What for?” She cannot fathom why he is sorry, she thought the kiss was wonderful. Perhaps it was not? Perhaps she did it wrong?

“Miss Sansa,” he steps back from her and the hands she had placed on his chest nearly grab at his shirt to keep him close. He has not used the _miss_ with her in weeks and it sounds horrid coming out of his mouth now. “I shouldn't have done that.”

“Why not?” she feels frustration build in her, and it makes her sound petulant.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair and says “you know why.”

She _doesn't_. He isn't saying that he regrets kissing her, he isn't even saying she did it wrong, just that he _shouldn't_. Why not? If he enjoyed it even half as much as she did, what is so wrong?

It takes her a moment to remember back to her Septa's warning words of letting no man except her husband take such liberties (though she hadn't listened at the time, why should she now?). She can only imagine what her Septa would say if she knew about this, about Jon; about how he was a servant and she a lady and how utterly improper it is and for a brief moment she thinks again of Jon dying in a trench while her brother and the other officers play cards in a barracks hundreds of leagues away.

“Can we forget it happened?” Jon asks, his voice near pleading and something catches in her throat. Jon has always seemed so level and calm, she has never once questioned that he would have the answer to everything, and to see him look so out of sorts now does terrible things to her heart. She only wants him to stop looking like that and so she nods her head, though she knows she will not forget it.

He breathes a sigh of relief and leans back against the opposite side of the arch and they wait out the rain. Sansa watches it turn the earth a darker brown and she thinks _no_ , she will not forget.

* * *

The world grows warmer and she tries to spend time with Robin, though whenever they are in his dark room with the curtains drawn against the sun, she can barely focus on the stories or the games they play. It isn't fair to Robin, but all she wants to do is go outside, into the fresh air. She wants to go to the garden, she wants to kneel in the dirt and push seeds into the ground with her fingers. She wants to breathe in the wet earth smell and listen to the bleating of sheep and the chirping of birds. She wants Jon's solid presence next to her, quiet and steady and calming. She wants to feel his lips on hers, though she hasn't had the courage to kiss him again.

Sometimes, she'll get lost in her daydreams and Robin will snap at her to pay attention to him. She feels guilty, it isn't his fault, but one day she gets so annoyed with him that she gets up and walks over to his windows and pulls the curtains aside. Robin gives a pitiful cry and when she turns, he has his arms flung over his head, as if the sun will burn him right up.

His windows are boarded, she cannot open them and his cries are so pathetic that she closes the curtains again.

* * *

“Watch out,” Jon calls as he pries one of the boards away from the window and it falls with a loud thunk to the floor below. Sunlight floods through the glass, making Robin squint against it. In the sun, he looks even paler than he had in the dark, Sansa can see the thin blue veins beneath his skin and she wonders if he's ever truly seen the sunlight before, behind the heavy curtains and boarded up windows. Considering his first reaction to it, she thinks not.

_They say the spores will kill me_ , Robin had explained as to why his windows were never opened. But Sansa has been reading in the library, she had even borrowed a book from Mr Seaworth (he had quite a selection and was more than happy to lend her one or two, he always had things that she would never find in Eyrie Manor's library). In the book from Quarth and in other books on health, most seemed to agree that sunlight and fresh air were _good._ And as time went on, Sansa was more and more certain that Robin _wasn't_ dying.

One day, he hadn't taken his milk of the poppy. They'd lost track of time and Sansa had needed to duck under the bed while Mr. Brune came in with the treatment and Robin had thrown such a fit because of the interruption that he'd knocked the medicine out of Brune's hand. And so he had gone without for hours and he had more energy and life about him that day than Sansa had ever seen.

And so she had snuck Jon in to pry the infuriating strips of wood off the windows. He hadn't wanted to at first, but she had begged and pleaded and he had finally given in.

“We've been planting foxglove and lavender and there's already bluebells,” she tells Robin as Jon continues his work. She has a book of flowers from the library open on her lap, pointing at the illustrations that match her seed packets as Robin looks on in wonder.

“I like these,” he points to one and she reads the name.

“Tulips, I'll see if Mr. Seaworth can get us some.”

There's a flush to Robin's cheeks and his eyes are shining and his mouth is stretched into such a smile, it makes him look like a proper child.

“I want to see it,” he says. “The garden, you said it belonged to our mothers. I want to see it.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jon turn to look at her and she knows he's likely thinking what she is. It's one thing for her to come here, to secretly open his windows, there's no way she can sneak him out.

“Maybe some day,” she says because it's all she can think to. “I was thinking, Mr. Seaworth had some puppets in his shop, perhaps I could get them and we could put on a play for you.”

“We?” Jon calls from the window and she tries not to smile at the disbelief in his tone.

“Yes, _we_ will put on a play. Jon, you can be Aemon the Dragonknight.”

“Dragonknight, huh?” Jon rubs at his beard for a moment and then leans down and picks up one of the thinner bits of wood and he holds it out in front of him like a sword. Robin laughs delightedly and Sansa can feel her battle against a smile failing.

“What in the Father's name-”

She watches Jon's face fall and he drops the piece of wood and she turns to see Mr. Brune standing in the doorway, face blotchy and red with anger.

“You horrid girl,” he chokes out and Sansa stands from the bed and backs away until she feels Jon behind her. “You wretched thing, are you trying to kill him?” Mr. Brune is looking at the window, the wood pieces on the floor, at Robin sitting in the bed, his pale face flushed.

“He's not dying,” she finds her voice, though it comes out shaking. “You all keep saying he's to die but he hasn't died yet. You're killing him keeping him locked up!”

“I'll have you sent away at once,” Mr. Brune isn't listening to her. She can see a glass of Robin's medicine in his hands, they appear to be shaking so hard it nearly spills. “And you, Snow, you're gone too. Mistress Lysa _never_ should have-”

“You won't!” Robin cries, lurching forward in his bed. “You _won't_ send her away, I won't let you! I'll send _you_ away!”

Mr. Brune freezes and beneath his rage, Sansa sees something else, a sort of horror.

“What's all this?” Mya asks, sliding into the room behind Mr. Brune. She takes in the scene, her eyes wide.

“I'll send _you_ away if you try to make her leave!” Robin is still shouting, his little chest heaving in fury. “She's my cousin! She's mine!”

“If that's what you wish,” Mr. Brune's voice comes out surprisingly soft, his eyes seem sad, somehow, and something twists in Sansa's heart.

“That's what I wish!”

Mr. Brune nods slowly and turns to go and Mya shoots Sansa one last, desperate look before taking off after him.

Sansa does not like Mr. Brune, but Mya does. She teases him and sometimes calls him by his given name and Sansa thinks, if Mya likes him then there must be something redeeming about him. What it is, she doesn't know, but it must be there.

“Robin,” she moves to her cousin and places a hand on his trembling shoulder. “I don't think sending Mr. Brune away is a good idea. He's only trying to help you.”

She wonders what it must be like for Mr. Brune. To live day in and day out with the weight of Robin's life on his shoulders. To spend a decade with the knowledge that it is your job to keep a child alive, to think that some day you will fail no matter how hard you try. Because isn't that what the doctors had told them all? That Robin _would_ die?

  
“He _won't_ send you away,” Robin huffs, his whole body shaking. “Jon either. _I_ am the lord of this house and he cannot send either of you away.”

Jon gathers up the wood pieces and leaves and she spends a long while calming Robin down.

* * *

“I am going out.”

Robin's imperious voice is nearly comical coming from such a frail thing, but no one laughs. The servants have all gathered to watch him in his wheelchair, dressed in proper clothes, prepared to go out into the sunshine.

Jon and Mr. Brune each take a side of the wheelchair and carry him down the remaining stairs and when he is planted on the ground outside, he looks around in wonder.

“You ready?” Sansa whispers to him and he nods eagerly, but then turns back to the servants.

“No one will follow us,” he continues in his little lordly tone. “And no one will tell my mother about this.”

They all nod, though Mr. Brune looks as though he's about to collapse at any moment. Sansa feels bad for him, something she didn't think was possible, but Mya's hand is on Mr. Brune's arm and Sansa thinks he will be alright.

Jon pushes the wheelchair at a slow, careful pace, but eventually they turn through the hedges and out of sight of the house. Once they are no longer visible to Mr. Brune and the other servants, Jon leans down and asks, “would you like to go faster?”

“Yes,” Robin's face breaks into a grin. “Faster!”

Jon throws a look at her with a shrug and then begins to push the wheelchair swiftly over the stone path. He is not running as fast as Sansa believes he can, but it's fast enough to make Robin give a _whoop_ of excitement and she pauses in her steps to watch them, wanting this particular moment to last a lifetime.

* * *

Roses and foxglove and peonies and phlox, little shoots begin to push out of the dirt and soon they blossom into a thousand different colors. Everywhere there is life; in her garden, throughout the grounds, the newborn animals. Even the house she once thought was dead is now breathing – curtains pulled back, windows thrown open, Cook's songs echoing through the halls. The servants are lighter on their feet, each carrying a hidden universe inside them.

* * *

One day two letters arrive for her. She finds them waiting for her on her table when she wakes and she stares at them all through breakfast. Mya is curious, she knows, but she can't bring herself to open them.

It isn't until later, when she's in the garden, that she slips them out of her pocket. Jon is showing Robin some of his animals and she can hear Robin's delighted cries every time the raven or Ghost does something. Jon has also brought in one of the lambs and normally Sansa would be over there, for she loves the lambs more than any of his other animals (except Ghost, perhaps), but today she sits under the big tree and stares at the letters in her hands.

She does not recognize the return address on the first, but the barely legible scrawl she does. It's the same writing she had seen as she and Arya sat together in their lessons with their Septa.

The letter itself is nothing, a very simple _happy birthday_ , _how are you, I am well_. It's a formal thing and Sansa can picture a severe teacher standing over Arya as she writes it, a scowl on her face.

Robb's letter is longer and there's a small packet enclosed in it. She reads the letter first. In it, he describes Pentos and the base he is stationed at and the men he serves with. It's all new information to her, though she realizes that many of his writings to her in the past had been filled with details like this, she had simply always skipped over it to get to the point of the letters. Now, though, she closes her eyes for a moment and tries to picture Pentos, tries to remember what her brother even looks like.

_You will be seventeen by the time you receive this,_ Robb writes. _A man writes me that you are well, a Lothor Brune. I hope it is true, since I have not heard from you directly. I have leave in the summer and will be joining you at Eyrie Manor. I have already let Aunt Lysa know. I thought about keeping your gift until then, but I have enclosed it here. It is something to remember your family by, to remind you who you are._

Her hand trembles as she opens the small packet and a necklace slides out. It isn't anything fancy, there are no jewels, it is not gold. It is simply a silver chain with a pendant hammered into the shape of a dog. No, not a dog, a wolf. A _direwolf_ , she recognizes the shape of it, she knows it's on her family crest. Robb must have had it custom made, she cannot imagine anyone in Pentos even knows what a direwolf is.

She isn't sure how long she stares at it before the bleating of a lamb causes her to look up. Jon sets the lamb down, the one she has dubbed Lady, and sits against the tree next to her. Off in the distance, Robin laughs and plays fetch with Ghost and Sansa notices that despite his weakened legs, every once in a while, he is able to sit up on his knees to throw the stick.

“You alright?” Jon asks and she nods, reaching out her hand to brush over Lady's soft head. Things are not tense between her and Jon, that isn't the right word, but ever since he kissed her, there has been a sort of awareness to all their interactions. They are pretending like it never happened, that's what he asked, but she has decided she will not forget and she doesn't want him to, either.

“My brother and sister wrote me,” she tells him and her eyes scan over Arya's letter again, brief and abrupt, her handwriting nearly illegible. Sansa can only imagine the frustration of Arya's teachers and the idea makes her smile.

“Who sent you the necklace?” he asks. “A direwolf?”

“It's on our family crest,” she explains. “My brother sent it for my birthday. Could you help me?” She hands him the necklace and turns her back to him and lifts her hair away from her neck.

“I didn't know it was your birthday,” he murmurs and it sends a shiver down her spine as he clasps the chain around her neck. She wants to imagine that his fingers trail across her neck, that they linger, but too soon they are gone.

“We never really celebrated it,” she shrugs. She was always away at school when her birthday came around and she would receive three letters – one from father (written by his assistant), one from Robb that she skimmed, and one from Arya, short and obligatory.

Looking back, she wonders if Robb had been trying. His letters had been so long and always included some gift or another. The letters she would skim and the gifts would be put into a drawer and forgotten about. Perhaps, she thinks, she was not so unwanted after all. Perhaps she had been too bitter and angry to see it.

* * *

That night she sits at the table in her room with a stack of parchments and a quill and ink that she had gotten from Mr. Brune (or rather, that she had practically bullied Mr. Brune into giving her, he has still not forgiven her for Robin's new freedom).

She has not written in so long, not since she left school, and she is out of practice. She writes _Robb_ at the top of the first paper, but nothing else comes out. She is left with her heart in her throat and her mind empty of words. What should she even write? She barely knows how to talk to people normally, somehow writing it down seems much harder.

She slides Robb to the side and begins on Arya. Arya is easier, somehow, and Sansa thinks that the rift between them means that Arya expects nothing of her and so there's little she could do to be a disappointment.

_Arya_ , she writes, _did you know that we have a cousin?_

* * *

“Absolutely not,” Mya laughs and spins her by the shoulders, giving her a slight push away from the kitchens.

Sansa usually leaves by the door near the kitchens, it leads directly into the gardens, but today Mya seems to be guarding the hall. She is unable to get a straight answer out of Mya and must leave by one of the other doors and she huffs as she has to take a longer route to the gardens.

She is in a foul mood this morning, having slept poorly after agonizing over Robb's letter late into the night, until her eyes blurred and her candle nearly ran out. She had gotten something down on paper, dried it, folded it, sealed it, and then had run downstairs and dropped it off near the door so that both letters would go out with the other correspondence in the morning. She had woken up with the sun and immediately ran down to take them back, having decided in the night that everything she wrote was horrible and inadequate, only to find them gone.

There has been something building within her ever since she arrived here and for some reason it feels as though it has splintered, as if the letters had been the final push and now she is cracking open at the seams. In the months that she has been at Eyrie Manor she has read more, seen more, spoken more, felt more than she has in her whole life and it all feels so suddenly overwhelming, she wishes she could go back to feeling nothing at all.

Jon is in the garden when she arrives and when he smiles at her, she feels immediately more calm. She isn't sure how he does that, how he makes her feel like she is _not_ about to fall apart at any moment with just a smile.

“You're later than usual,” he says when she gets near and she frowns at him.

“Mya wouldn't let me through the kitchens.” At that he gives a little laugh and she finds herself narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “Do you know why?”

“I don't know anything,” he grins and rocks back on his heels, like he _absolutely_ has a secret and he's barely trying to hide it.

“You do!” she accuses with a gasp. “Tell me.”

“I've been sworn to secrecy.” His smile lights up his face and crinkles the corners of his eyes and she finds it all very distracting when she wants to be angry with him. To keep her anger so that she might try and figure out a way to get him to tell, she lowers her eyes and lets her half unbound hair fall into her face to keep her from seeing his infuriating smile.

If she were a normal girl, if she had ever had friends before, maybe then she would know what to do, she would know how to wheedle a secret out of someone. But she isn't normal and she's never had a friend before and she gets so flustered around Jon that she never knows what to say. Perhaps she should threaten to steal Ghost from him, or to hold him to the puppet show for Robin that he seemed quite averse to. Perhaps tell him that she will get Cook to never make his favorite hand pies or... or perhaps she will threaten to kiss him again.

She shouldn't do that, it's _improper_ and Jon had asked her to forget it, though she really does not agree and she thinks if they kiss again, maybe he will change his mind. But-

“Don't cry,” Jon's voice seems worried and for a moment she is confused until she realizes that with her head ducked down, he thinks she is truly upset. She remembers the last time she had cried in front of him, how soft he had been, how concerned for her, and though she knows it isn't fair, she tilts her head down even further and gives a small sniffle.

“You and Mya have so many secrets,” she says in a small voice that wavers just a bit and for a moment she's surprised at the emotion in her own voice. It is true, though, he and Mya seem so close and although she doesn't want it to, sometimes it bothers her. She doesn't think she has ever been that close to another person and she's only coming to realize now that she wants to be.

His boots step into her field of vision and his voice sounds worried when he says “it's just a surprise cake for your birthday, we aren't keeping things from you.”

“My birthday?” she startles and lifts her head up to look at him and she watches his eyes scan her face and, she assumes, he finds no sign that she had been crying.

“You tricked me,” he mutters. “Yes, I told Mya it was your birthday and she told Cook and Cook insisted that you have a cake. And no,” he continues when she opens her mouth to speak, “I won't tell you what kind, at least let _something_ stay a secret. Mya's going to be furious with me for telling you.”

“I'll pretend,” she says and then puts her hand in front of her mouth with a gasp, opening her eyes wide in feigned surprise. From the look on Jon's face, it isn't very convincing, but it will have to do.

He seems to consider something for a moment and then he reaches into the pocket of his jacket that had been laying over the swing. The days start off cold sometimes but by now, with the sun almost directly overhead, it's much too warm for a jacket. He pulls out a long, thin package tied in twine that she thinks she recognizes from Mr. Seaworth's shop and he holds it out to her, the tips of his ears red and his eyes almost unable to meet hers.

She takes it from him and carefully unties the knotted twine and the paper falls open in her hand and inside the package is a fan. She spreads the fan and she recognizes it as the one that caught her eye the first time she had been at _Seaworth's_ , a pale blue background with delicate, hand painted roses. It's just as beautiful as she remembers and she lets out a soft _oh Jon_ , though she can think of nothing else to say. She feels overwhelmed by the gift, not because of it's beauty or what it had cost, but that Jon had remembered. That Jon had even been _aware_ that she had noticed it in the shop, had remembered it, had gone back to pick it up.

“It's too much,” she breathes, finally looking up at him and noticing the now familiar sensation of tears gathering in her eyes and a lump forming in her throat.

“Oh, it wasn't too expensive, I promise,” Jon frowns. “I told you Lord Mormont left me some money, I rarely use it, I get by with what I make in wages usually...”

She shakes her head and says “you shouldn't spend your money on me. I don't need fancy things.”

It's true, she realizes. She has never _needed_ fancy things, she has never cared for them, has never appreciated their beauty or value. She had never cared for much of anything before she came here and now she finds that she cares for things she never knew existed. The smell of wet earth, watching the bud of a flower peel open, the bleating of a baby lamb; laughing with another girl, heads bowed together. And she cares for Jon, much more than she knows how to say. The fan is beautiful and she loves it, but she doesn't _need_ it.

“Alright,” he says, “no one _needs_ fancy things, but sometimes they're nice to have. And what else would I spend my money on?”

“A new coat,” she accuses and he laughs - she has scolded him more than once for his over-patched coat.

“The coat keeps me warm, am I supposed to go buy a fancy new one only to have it immediately covered in animal hair and dirt?”

She scowls at him, though she knows he is right. Her scowl fades as she looks back down at the fan and she slowly opens and closes it, watching the roses bloom and fade over and over and she thinks she will never forget this moment. She will never forget the beauty of the fan and the way it made her feel when she opened the gift and she thinks she understands what Jon means – perhaps she does not need the fan itself, but she wants it all the same, and somehow it is better having come from Jon than if she had bought it herself the day she first saw it.

“Thank you,” she says finally and means it. And then because she wants to, because it is her birthday, she steps forwards and leans up on her toes and kisses him again. She feels him let out a heavy sigh through his nose and his arm wraps around her waist and he pulls her to him, careful of the fan between them. Whatever resolve he had before seems gone now and she is glad of it.

When she hears Mya's voice calling out what feels like years later, Jon finally pulls back, and she is left breathless; her lips feel swollen and her knees weak. “Don't forget to act surprised,” Jon murmurs, his mouth still so close to hers and she wants to tell him that she doesn't even _want_ a cake, she wants to keep doing _this_ forever. But Mya calls out again and Jon sighs and steps back from her and she manages to keep herself upright, though she feels lightheaded and weak.

* * *

“Cake!” Robin cries as she sets a tray down in his room.

“Cook made it for my birthday,” she tells him.

“Why wasn't I there?”

She isn't sure what to tell him, that the servants are still wary of him, of being too close to him, though every day he grows stronger, his skin less pale, even his hair seems to be fuller.

“Well, because I wanted us to celebrate together,” she lies and waves her hand at the tray with it's two pieces of cake and cups of tea. Robin likes that answer and eats the cake with more vigor than she has ever seen him eat anything and she laughs around her own bite. The cake is yellow with a lemon curd filling and a sweet icing and she had loved the piece she already had with Jon and Mya and Cook and the other servants. There was just enough left to split into two pieces.

After they are done, Robin begs for a story, but she hasn't brought a book with her today. She wonders if she should tell him one of the northern fairytales – she has read the book so often now that she thinks she knows them by heart. But Robin has heard them all and he begs for a new story and she remembers Robb's letter and his description of Pentos and she closes her eyes and pictures it and then the words begin to tumble from her mouth.

With her eyes closed and far away lands in her head, she makes up a story, of a soldier stationed far from home and looking for the perfect gift in a foreign city to send to his sister, who he misses quite fiercely. She makes up people – a vendor who tries to sell the soldier counterfeit wares, a beggar who rewards the soldier's coin with a flower, a beautiful woman that catches the soldier's eye and nearly distracts him from his quest. On and on she goes, and when she finally opens her eyes, she finds Robin leaning back against his pillows with his own eyes closed and a smile gracing his lips.

* * *

The day Robin stands on his own, she cries.

She does not sob or become hysterical, but the tears slide down her cheeks as she watches Robin stumble towards Jon, arms outstretched and a look of concentration on his face.

“I did it,” Robin says, breathless with satisfaction. “Sansa, did you see me?”

“I saw you,” she laughs.

“Again,” Robin turns back to Jon and pushes at him until Jon takes a few steps back and Robin follows after him. Again and again, until they have crossed almost to the big tree in the middle. Robin collapses to the ground in exhaustion but he is laughing and so is Jon and so is she.

As they head back inside, Jon pushing the wheelchair as Robin rubs at the muscles in his legs, Robin says “one day I will walk all the way from my rooms to the garden. I'll run, even. I'll climb the tree!”

“Easy,” Jon laughs. “No climbing trees until we're sure it's safe.”

“I can do it, though,” Robin says in wonder. “I can do anything.”

* * *

Flowers bloom and Robin walks and the lambs grow bigger and she can feel magic not just in the gardens, but everywhere now.

When they are alone, Jon kisses her. Sometimes he kisses her even when they are not alone and Sansa thinks Mya has figured it out, though she hasn't said anything. At night, she can think of nothing else but the way Jon presses her up against the tree in their garden, against the cart that they take to town, against the stone arches when they hide from the rain.

The days grow warmer and warmer, until she is able to wear her King's Landing dresses again, though by now most of them are stained with dirt from kneeling in the garden, pulling weeds or playing with Lady and Ghost.

One day a letter arrives, telling them that Arya will be coming for the summer holidays and she feels apprehension. She has come to feel comfortable here, with Jon and Mya and Robin and the servants. She is beginning to feel like she _belongs_ , like people want her around and she worries that Arya will disrupt that. She tries to reassure herself that nothing will change, but somewhere deep inside her, she worries.

She wants Arya to come here, she wants to take Arya to the room she found that might be their mother's. She wants to show Arya the picture there. She wants to bring Arya to the garden and tell her about the flowers. She wants to introduce Jon and Mya and Robin and Lady and Ghost and Raven. And what she fears most, the thing that sits in her stomach like a stone, is the idea that Arya will hate it all, that she will take the magic back from the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really just want to thank anyone who's reading this. This fic weirdly means a lot to me, though I think it's because The Secret Garden means a lot to me. It helped my love of reading and my love of plants. It made me a collector (of both plants and versions of the book, I have about 7). So yeah, if you have made it this far, thank you, and I hope you enjoyed it even a little bit


	4. Summer

_I believe in anything_

_that brings you back home to me_

* * *

When the day comes, Sansa shows up at the hired carriage to Gulltown in one of her nicer dresses, one that isn't stained with dirt. Mr. Brune simply nods at her and the ride to the port city is silent, though not as tense as she thought it would be. Mr. Brune has not forgiven her, she thinks, but even he has noticed the change in Robin and there is a softness in Mr. Brune's eyes when he watches her cousin talk and laugh now. Robin has not walked in front of anyone but her and Jon – he says he wants to master it before he does.

She is nervous, though she has never felt nervous seeing Arya before. She has never _cared_ before. Arya had not responded to her letter, but not much time has passed, perhaps Arya decided she would respond in person. Or maybe Arya simply hadn't cared to respond. Sansa has read and reread Arya's abrupt birthday letter, looking for any clues in her sister's words or handwriting, any insight into who Arya is.

It is something she has been thinking about since learning of Arya's arrival, that she does not really know her sister at all. She only knows their arguments; she only remembers her anger and her bitterness towards the squalling child in the room next door. She only remembers pressing her hands to her ears as Arya screamed, as the Septas rushed in and out to try and calm the baby, her father nowhere to be found. No, she doesn't know Arya at all.

They arrive early at the docks, Sansa insisting that they get there before the ship. She does not want Arya waiting alone for hours like she had.

As the ship comes in to harbor, she keeps her eyes on it, like she will be able to see Arya on the deck, though it's much too far away. She has to wait until almost all the passengers have disembarked before she sees Arya coming down the gangway. Arya greets them with a wary nod and they must wait for her trunk and Sansa makes sure Mr. Brune loads it on to the carriage, which he does with minimal grumbling.

The ride back from Gulltown is just as jarring and rocky and she watches Arya hold on to the seats to keep her balance, just as Sansa had when she arrived. They have barely spoken a word and Sansa does not know where to start.

“Did you get my letter?” she finally says, and Arya nods.

“I didn't know we had a cousin.”

“Neither did I. Imagine my surprise when I found him. I thought he was a ghost at first.”

This seems to catch Arya's attention and she tilts her head and asks “what's he like?”

“Well,” Sansa hesitates, wondering what to say, especially here in front of Mr. Brune. “He's very small.”

* * *

Mr. Brune leads Arya away, up the stairs and to the room that will be hers.

Conversation had stalled in the carriage, there was not much that Sansa could say with Mr. Brune present. She could not explain to Arya about the garden. She could not tell her of Robin's progress, the way he had learned to walk. She could not tell her that the other day, she and Jon had taken Robin to the barn and Jon had taught him all about the animals there; pigs and goats and sheep and cows and chickens. She could not tell her how Robin had run off with Ghost, playing fetch and laughing, his face flushed and his eyes alight. And she certainly could not tell her that while Robin played, Jon had kissed her dizzy against the side of the barn.

There's a stone in the pit of her stomach watching Arya walk away, watching the scowl on her face as she looks around the manor.

* * *

She steels herself and knocks on the door and enters when she hears Arya's _come in_.

“Oh,” Arya looks up from the trunk she is unpacking, seeming confused with Sansa's appearance.

“Do you need help?” Sansa asks, gesturing at the trunk, at the clothes strewn across the bed. Arya shrugs and Sansa takes this as a yes. She remembers now that Arya hates cleaning up, and she especially hates clothes.

She and Arya hang the dresses in near silence and she isn't sure how to start, what to say. One of the tapestries in Arya's room catches her eye and so she says “do you know there are doors hidden behind the tapestries?”

Arya perks up at that and narrows her eyes, like she isn't quite sure she believes. Then, almost hesitantly, Arya pulls back the tapestry nearest to her and looks behind it. Sansa laughs, “it wouldn't be behind _that_ one, that's the wall to the outside.”

There's a look on Arya's face that seems almost shocked and she isn't saying something back or arguing and it takes Sansa a moment to realize that Arya has never heard her laugh before.

“Here,” Sansa puts one of Arya's dresses down and goes over to the wall she knows the servant's hall runs behind. “One of these.”

She peeks behind a tapestry depicting some sort of battle and finds nothing, but then Arya calls “here!” and when she looks over, Arya has found it. Without waiting, Arya is opening the door and stepping through and Sansa follows.

“Come on, I'll show you something,” Sansa takes her hand and leads her through the corridor and she ignores the confusion on Arya's face. She leads them to the room that might have been their mother's and takes her inside and shows her the photograph on the vanity. “This is mother,” she points to the girl that she now knows from Lysa's other photographs is Catelyn.

Arya is silent and Sansa holds her breath and waits, waits for the inevitable explosion or a cruel _who cares_. Instead, what she finds is Arya staring hard at the photograph, eyes scanning over it again and again, like she's trying to memorize it, like she's trying to remember, though there is no way she could.

“You look like her,” Arya says eventually, quietly. Enviously.

“So do you,” Sansa tells her. “Look, you have her nose.” Arya's fingers tighten around the frame for just a moment, an acknowledgment. “I don't know if this was mother's room or Lysa's,” Sansa finally says to fill the silence. She thinks, perhaps, that Arya doesn't know what to do. Sansa remembers how overwhelming this was for her, all those months ago (though it seems like a lifetime).

She watches Arya search the vanity, just as she did, looking for some sort of clue and Sansa thinks maybe they are not so different after all. In one of the drawers, she pulls out a letter opener in the shape of a sword, a curious thing that Sansa had found and immediately put back. But Arya studies it and then turns to show it off and says, “ice.”

“Ice?”

“It's Ice,” Arya confirms, looking back down at the letter opener, and Sansa knows now that she means their family's ancestral sword. Sansa has never seen the sword in person, she assumes it is still hanging in the great hall back in Winterfell. But Arya would know, Arya has always been interested in weapons, Sansa remembers that she had a book on famous swords; one of them was Ice.

“This was mother's room,” Sansa breathes. Her mother and father had been betrothed for years prior to their marriage, Catelyn had been too young when the engagement occurred, but the two likely sent letters and gifts to each other until they were finally allowed to meet and marry. Father had sent her a letter opener, a replica of his house sword.

Looking around the room, it has taken on a new light. Her mother had slept in this bed, played with those dolls, brushed her hair in front of this mirror. Her mother had dreamed and laughed and cried here. And, after locking up the garden, grandfather had put the key back in her jewelry box.

“You should have it,” Sansa says, turning back to the small sword still clutched in Arya's hand. Arya does not argue and she slowly, carefully, almost reverently, tucks the thing away in her skirt pocket.

“Did you take something?” Arya asks.

“A key. I took a key,” Sansa's heart beats erratically in her chest. “But it doesn't have to be mine. It can be ours.”

“A key to what?”

* * *

The garden is full of color and life; the leaves sway gently in the breeze, birds flit through it's branches, bees dart from flower to flower, a rabbit dives into it's burrow, and Sansa holds her breath.

Arya looks around, seemingly unaware of her own movements, how she turns on the spot, how her eyes open wide, and the hope rises in Sansa's chest.

“You did all this?”

“Jon helped,” she says without thinking and Arya's gaze snaps back to her.

“Jon?”

“Oh, Jon is...” she doesn't know how to explain Jon. “He's a friend,” she finishes, though it hardly describes everything that Jon is. If she were truthful, she isn't sure she could ever come up with the right words to describe who Jon is, not even if she were given all the time in the world.

* * *

Watching Arya try to figure out Mya is an exercise in keeping her laughter in. Mya is effusive and energetic and Arya watches her with a sort of confusion and fascination. She watches Cook with awe, watches Cook's powerful arms ripple with muscle as she kneads dough and lifts barrels and bags of flour. And when Jon shows up, her eyes light up at the sight of Ghost and Raven and when Raven begs for corn, Arya demands to be the one to feed him.

Arya grins as Raven eats out of her hand and over the top of Arya's head, Jon gives her a look, a small knowing smile.

(Days ago, when she had finally told him of her worry, Jon had held her face in his hands and whispered to her that Arya would love it here, that Arya would love _her_. “How could she not?”)

* * *

Robin comes with them to the garden the next day and Arya cackles delightedly when they turn out of sight of the manor and Robin immediately gets out of his chair and begins to skip. He turns and gives a wicked smile and calls out for Arya to race him. Sansa watches as Arya bunches her skirts in her hands and takes off after their cousin, determination etched into every line of her face. Bold and brave and _alive_ , they run to the garden.

* * *

In the evenings, they sit on the moors and watch the sun set. Jon had showed it to her one day and after the garden, it is her favorite thing.

The days are becoming hotter, but in the evenings it cools and the winds over the moors carry the scent of heather and earth. The sheep graze nearby and Arya has fallen in love with the goats, feeding them anything that they will eat, watching the little ones playfully butt against each other. She takes most to the smallest one, a fierce little thing, and Jon tells her it doesn't have a name.

“Nymeria,” Arya decides, watching it play fight it's brothers and sisters.

“Nymeria it is,” Jon smiles.

* * *

One night there is a knock on her door, almost too light to hear, she almost thinks she was mistaken, but then it happens again, slightly louder.

It comes from the servant's door and she wonders if Robin has come to visit her, as he has done once or twice before, and she calls _come in_.

To her surprise, it's Arya, in her nightgown with her feet bare.

Sansa sits up in bed and watches Arya come in, seeming hesitant. Sansa does not say anything, she fears she will scare Arya away if she does.

“I took something,” Arya finally speaks, standing halfway between the door and the bed. “I took Ice and you said the key could be both of ours. You didn't take anything for yourself.”

“I suppose not,” Sansa agrees, though she hadn't really thought about it before.

Arya seems to fight with herself before finally coming to a decision and stepping resolutely forward, holding out her hand and opening her fist to reveal one of the lacquer hair clips from their mother's jewelry box. Sansa reaches out her own hand and takes it.

“It will look good with your hair,” Arya says, eyes to the side, face red, her hands clenching into fists at her side but Sansa can see the way they shake, the way Arya shifts from foot to foot.

“You think?” Sansa asks, unsure what to say, a strange feeling swirling through her chest. “How should I wear it?”

She begins to try out different ways to pin her hair and Arya huffs and climbs onto the bed and takes the clip from her and kneels behind her and clips her hair back properly.

They sit for a while, Arya picking at the hem of her nightgown. There are a thousand things Sansa wants to say, but she thinks, maybe, that she needs to let Arya speak first. She tries to be like Jon, silent and strong, tries to let Arya work through her own feelings without pressure.

“You're different,” Arya finally says.

“I am. Or, I think I am. Sometimes I think I was always like this, just hidden away.” Arya looks at her curiously and Sansa hesitates to continue. “I think... I think maybe I was like the garden. I only looked dead on the outside, but really I was alive the whole time.”

Arya does not call her silly or stupid; she does not laugh or roll her eyes. Instead, she lays back against the pillows and stares up at the canopy in thought. Sansa takes the clip out of her hair and lays back as well, studying the clip, wondering how often their mother had worn it.

“Did you hate me?” Arya asks, her voice quiet in the silence of the room. “Because I killed her?”

Something catches in Sansa's throat and she shakes her head furiously. “No.” Arya doesn't seem to believe her, so she says “I was too mad at the world to hate you. I never thought you _killed_ her. Not once.”

Its true. She knows that mother had died in childbirth, but it had never occurred to her to blame _Arya_ for that. She had been too selfish and angry and bitter at _everything_.

“Robb doesn't either,” she says with confidence, though Robb has never said it. Robb doesn't need to. She is sure now that Robb loved them as best he could, had tried as best he could, though they had not seen it.

Arya turns abruptly on her side, facing away, burying her face into a pillow and Sansa can only tell by the slight movement of her thin shoulder that she is crying. She places the lacquer clip onto the night stand and shifts so that she is closer to Arya and she pulls the sheets up over them and settles herself close, but not touching. Slowly, as though she is approaching one of Jon's animals, she lifts a hand up and smooths Arya's hair back from her temple and she begins to whisper a story, one of the northern fairytales.

She tells Arya of the weirwoods, of the universes contained in them, of the magic hidden inside, and she runs her fingers through Arya's hair until her shoulders stop shaking, until her breathing evens out, until they both fall asleep.

* * *

She keeps a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh, trying to move as quietly as she can so that Robin will not hear her. Near the center of the garden, Robin stands with his hands outstretched, turning his head this way and that, listening for any sound of movement, the blindfold firmly over his eyes.

Arya gives a daring burst of laughter and darts past him and Robin lunges towards the sound, but misses her and laughs as well, turning back around to where he thinks she went.

Jon is somewhere, Sansa has lost sight of him, and so she lets out a small scream when his hands slide around her waist from behind. The sound makes Robin turn and Jon laughs quietly and Sansa looks to him with a gasp. “Traitor!” she tries to whisper, but it is already too late, Robin is making his way over. Jon holds her in place as she struggles to get away, Robin coming ever closer with his hands outstretched and a grin on his face.

“She's over here,” Jon calls encouragingly, holding her tightly.

She is trying her best to be angry with him, but she cannot help her laughter as she tries to slip free from his grasp, though it is useless. Robin is close now, his outstretched hands merely a step away when she hears a noise that she should not hear – the sound of the garden door opening.

Robin stumbles into her, laughing wildly, “I've got you, you're it!” he shouts, but she is not listening.

Behind her, Jon is stiff and he immediately lets her go and steps back. In the distance, Arya freezes.

At the doorway to the garden stands Robb and behind him, Lysa, looking pale and confused in the bright sunlight. There is a moment where nothing seems to move, not Robb, not Lysa, not even her own heart; it stills in her chest.

Robb's face is blank and Sansa wonders if he is angry, if he will take her away from here. If Lysa will send her away for everything she has done, for all the rules she has broken, and fear tears at her chest and she nearly forgets how to breathe.

“Sansa,” Robin whines, “you're it!” He reaches up to remove his blindfold and looks at her curiously before he turns to see what she is looking at and he falls silent and still himself.

Slowly, after what seems like an eternity, Lysa steps forward from behind Robb, her eyes trained on Robin, her face a mixture of agony and disbelief.

“What is going on?” Robb finally speaks, his eyes moving from Sansa to Arya to Robin, to Jon behind her, slowly backing away. When no one speaks, he continues, “the serving girl told us you might be in the garden, though Aunt Lysa seems to think no one should be in here.” His eyes linger on Robin and Sansa realizes he must have known about him, or heard about him. But the Robin in front of him is not the Robin he would have been expecting.

“I'm sorry,” Sansa finally says, though she isn't sure if she is directing it at Robb or her aunt. “I found the key, I know I wasn't supposed to come in, but I thought... what harm could it do?”

“Harm?” Lysa finally speaks, her eyes still on Robin, who is still frozen in place, clutching at Sansa's dress in his small hands. “No,” Lysa's voice comes out stronger this time, “you have done no harm.”

With that she moves forward and Robin lets go of Sansa's dress and takes a step towards his mother. Lysa stops and watches Robin walk to her and suddenly she lets out a sort of cry and it feels like the entire world is just the two of them, moving towards each other. Lysa falls to her knees, uncaring of her dress, the black of it stark and out of place here in the garden. Robin pauses in front of her, wonder and fear making his eyes wide and his cheeks pale. Lysa lifts one shaking hand to his face and that's all it takes for Robin to collapse into her.

“Come,” Robb's voice sounds from beside her, Sansa hadn't even noticed him moving. He gestures for Arya and takes Sansa's hand and she looks around for Jon, only to see him disappearing out the garden door and she wants to call him back, but she does not.

They leave Lysa and Robin in the garden and Robb leads her and Arya out into the hedgerows and when he finally stops walking, he turns to them and looks them over.

Sansa wonders what he must think. She with her dress stained with dirt, her hair unbound and her skin darkened from days in the sun. Arya in the boys trousers that Sansa had discovered in her trunk. Arya had told her that she had gotten them from one of her friends in the town near her boarding school – she used to skip class to play with the boys in town and in order to hide better, she borrowed their clothes. Sansa had agreed that the trousers were more suitable for playing in the garden than a dress, but now she regrets it from the way Robb's eyes are stuck on them.

“I didn't think you were coming until next week,” Sansa says and that forces Robb to look at her instead of Arya dressed like a boy.

“I got an early ship,” he says. “I arrived an hour ago and couldn't find any of you. Lysa had no idea where you were, she barely seemed to know that Arya was even here.” He lets out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. “Then some servant says you might be in a garden and Lysa just... well I followed her here.”

“I'm sorry,” Sansa says again. “You must be disappointed...”

Before she can continue, Robb laughs. “Disappointed?” he breathes, looking over her and Arya again. “ _Disappointed_? To see you two laughing? To see you playing together? To find that our cousin is not on the edge of death? How could I possibly be disappointed?”

“You aren't angry?” Arya confirms, hesitant and hopeful.

“No,” Robb laughs again but Sansa can now see that his eyes are shining and she wonders if he will cry. She has never seen Robb cry, but then again _she_ had never cried before she came here. Arya had never cried before she came here and Sansa wonders if maybe that is the garden's real magic. “I sent you here,” he steps forward and takes Sansa's face in his hands, his eyes searching her, “I sent you here to get you away from King's Landing. I saw what that place did to father, what it was doing to you both. I used to have such arguments with him about...” he trails off and turns to Arya and reaches out a hand and she slowly steps in and he wraps his hand around the back of her head and leans down to place a kiss on the top of it.

“I'm not disappointed,” he says again. “I could never be.”

* * *

If she thought there was new life in Eyrie Manor before, it is nothing compared to the joy that radiates through it's halls when Lysa and Robin walk back together.

Mr. Brune nearly collapses, slumped against a wall with Mya propping him up, a smile on her face and a look of wonder on his. Cook cries out and drops a jug of milk on the ground but no one seems to notice or care. The other servants gasp and some even tear up and work halts as Robin runs the rest of the way to the manor, just to show off.

Jon is nowhere to be found and Sansa wants desperately to go find him, but Robb's arm is around her and she cannot leave and she tries to tell herself that all will be alright. For the first time in her entire life, she sits at a table with her family and eats dinner. It is a strange affair, none of them seem to know what to say and they eat mostly in silence, but there is a lightness to it. There is happiness and hope and relief so massive it fills the room and there is no need for words.

* * *

“Here you are,” she says when she finds him in the barn, filling a water trough from a bucket. Jon nods at her but can't seem to look at her and the stone in her stomach is back.

“Your brother settling in?” he asks.

She does not want to talk about Robb. It has been three days since she has last seen Jon and she feels tense and sour about it. “You've been avoiding me,” she accuses and he shrugs but will not turn to look at her still and her anger flares and she steps forward and takes his arm and forces him to turn to face her. Even though she is angry, even though it has only been three days, she has missed him terribly and the sight of his face is enough to calm her ire.

“Careful,” he extracts himself from her grip and takes a step back, “I reek of animal, you shouldn't get too close.” His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows and he is covered in a sheen of sweat from his labor and the hot day, streaks of grime and animal hair covering his pants, dirt under his fingernails.

“It has never mattered before,” she scowls.

“It always has,” he sighs, “I just forgot myself.”

She is so angry she could scream and she nearly does. Three whole days of not seeing him, of Robb sending her looks every time Arya or Robin mentions Jon. She knows Robb saw the way Jon was holding her in the garden, but he has not asked her directly about it. She is not sure she wants him to.

Sometimes she wonders what Robb would say. If he would forbid it, if he would tell her that she needs to find a proper husband; go back to King's Landing, debut in society like she was supposed to. Except that does not fit with everything else Robb has said, it does not fit with him sending her here in the first place. He has said more about King's Landing, about his hatred for the city and the politics and the social climbing. He would not want her to be a part of that, but she supposes that doesn't mean he wants her to marry a servant, either.

_Marry_ , she startles. No one has mentioned marriage, she and Jon are just _kissing_.

“Stop it,” she says and Jon looks up at her. “You're ruining everything.”

“I'm trying to _not_ ruin everything,” he rubs a hand over his face and it leaves a streak of dirt across his cheek. “You've got your family back, I want you to be happy with them.”

A frustrated sound rips from her throat and she closes the distance between them and grabs his shirt so that he cannot back away and leans up and presses her mouth to his and she feels some of the fight leave him and he kisses her back.

“Sans,” he groans and pulls away, but he cannot go far with her grip on his shirt.

“Do you love me?” she asks. It is not something they have talked about, but it is something she has been thinking about. The books she has read from the library have described love and it has been something she has been trying to figure out. Love for her family, for Mya, for Jon; how they are the same and how they are different.

“Doesn't matter,” he says and she gives a sharp tug on his shirt.

“It does, it _matters_. If you tell me this has all meant nothing to you, that you were just having fun, then I will leave you alone,” she does not _want_ to leave him alone but she will if that's what he chooses. “But if... if you care about me, it matters. I know you're afraid of Robb, but you needn't be. Robb wants me to be happy, he will come around.”

“Of course it means something,” Jon sighs and she sees the rest of his resistance fade. “You're all I think about.”

“Good,” she nods, “then I am not alone. Now, are you done being stubborn?”

“Stubborn?” he scowls. “If either of us are stubborn, it's-”

She cuts him off with a kiss and she does not care that he is sweaty or if his hands leave trails of dirt and grime on her dress. She is not alone and neither is he and that is all that matters.

* * *

Dinner is going better than she expected, though it had started out tense and uncomfortable. She hopes Jon had not felt too out of place, she had insisted to Robb that the dinner not be overly formal, she did not want to have to watch Jon try to figure out which fork to use (though really, Arya still has yet to care enough to figure it out and so Jon would not have been alone in it).

But halfway through the first course, Jon and Robb had found common ground in horses, and they are currently in deep conversation about breeds and trading and all sorts of things she has no interest in.

At one point, Arya leans over and whispers “I think maybe _Robb_ wants to marry Jon,” and Sansa has to put her napkin over her mouth so she does not spit out her food.

* * *

After Jon has left for the evening, she corners Robb and demands his opinion.

“He seems like a decent sort,” Robb says, sitting her down on the couch in the sitting room and setting himself next to her. “But this is... you are sure this is what you want?”

“It is,” she says without hesitation. She knows that if she chooses Jon, she will never truly be able to go back to society, but that does not bother her in the slightest. She had never cared for society, she had never cared for _anything_ before she came here, though she does not know how to explain this to Robb. And she knows that Robb would have every right to disown her, to cut her out of the family if she marries against his will, but somehow she does not think he would.

Robb sits back with a nod and though he still seems wary, he does not fight her. Instead, he says “I always thought it would be Arya I'd be having this conversation with.”

She laughs at that and Robb does too and neither of them have to say out loud that he will probably be in this same position in a few years when Arya is of age, when she decides she also wants to marry out of society, or not marry at all.

“When my contract with the army is up,” he says, taking her hand, “I am leaving to reopen Winterfell. I want you to come home.”

_Home_.

The word is strange to her. King's Landing had never been _home_ , her schools had never been home, and she knows that Eyrie Manor is not her home, though it is the closest thing she has ever felt to it. _Winterfell_ is her home and she suddenly, desperately wants to go back. To go north, to the place where her mother and father were happy, where her family was last whole. But she is torn – the garden is here, Jon is here, Mya and Robin and Cook and all the people she has come to care about are here.

Robb is looking at her so intently that all she can do is nod and a smile breaks out on his face that makes her heart ache because though he also takes after their mother, his smile matches the one she had seen in the photograph on their father.

* * *

“Would you come with me?” she asks and she cannot look at his face and so instead she studies their joined hands, held in front of them.

She feels rather than hears Jon take a deep breath, his chest expanding against her back where she leans into him as he sits against the tree. The garden is quiet today, they are the only two here, taking refuge under the tree against the midday sun.

Robb still has another year in the army, Jon does not need to decide now, but she has brought it up to him anyway. She knows that she could stay here at Eyrie Manor indefinitely, Robin has already said she could. And the thought of leaving her garden is painful, but she thinks perhaps she does not _need_ it like she once thought she did, not if she has Arya and Robb. Not if she has Jon. She will not force him to come to Winterfell with her, but she hopes with all her heart that he will.

“Aye,” he finally says, “I'd go with you.”

“You would?” she turns to look at him, at his easy smile and his moor grey eyes.

“I don't need much,” he shrugs. “Ghost, Raven, enough food to keep me alive.”

“Is that it?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at him, “nothing else on the list?”

“I don't think so,” he says in mock seriousness and then laughs when she pushes at his shoulder. His smile falls then and he looks her straight in the eye and says “I would follow you anywhere. Wherever you want to go.”

“Do you think I could have a garden up north?” She does not remember Winterfell, but she knows the north is much colder than here and she wonders if things will be able to grow there.

“You can have anything you want,” he tells her and she decides she likes that answer. She will have a garden in Winterfell, she will make it grow. There is a universe inside of her and she can do anything she sets her mind to.

* * *

Robb is set to leave soon, back to Pentos, and she and Arya spend as much time with him as they can. She spends hours leading him through the garden, showing him the seeds she planted. He does not seem too interested in flowers, but he listens anyway with a smile.

She thinks Robb doesn't understand the garden; none of them do, really. Even Jon, though he understands her better than most, though he was here through all of it. They'll never truly understand what the garden means to her.

It was the garden that had brought her back to life, not the other way around. She had tended it and in return, it had given her magic. The magic to open her heart again, to heal Robin, to coax Lysa from her rooms, to gather her family around her, to bring her love.

Sometimes, things are not so dead that they cannot be brought back; sometimes, even the coldest of hearts can bloom with the right care and just a bit of magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading


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